[quote=Noob]Submitted by partypup on August 30, 2009 – 6:46pm
I wasn’t sure if I was reading this correctly at first, but it really seems to be the case: this is the end of America’s era in space.
Partypup–are you kidding me? End of American’s era in space? Have you not heard about the international space station? American is on that!
Have you not heard about Spirit and Opportunity? The rovers on Mars–we are doing that.
Have you not heard about LRO/LCROSS? American is doing that. (really cool pictures of the Apollo landing sites were you can see the astronauts’ foot trails)
Have you not heard about the planned man mission to the moon? America is doing that.
Have you not heard about the Ares Rocket? America is doing that.
Have you not heard about the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle? American is doing that too.
Having been through the Mercury program, the Gemini program, the Apollo program, countless unmanned programs like explorer, voyager, and surveyor, I know that that the end of one program is not the end of America’s efforts in space.
+ Hubble, Dawn, New Horizons, … NASA is involved in all kinds of things.
Space shuttle seemed like a good idea at the time. It was supposed to be a lot cheaper and more “nimble” than it turned out to be. Too bad. In the mean time, maybe we can hitch rides to ISS using SpaceX launchers.
Ultimately the problem is that human beings aren’t all that suited for space exploration. They require a lot of heavy support equipment and you need to get them back safely once you’re done. For the cost of a single space shuttle mission (where we put 7 humans into low Earth orbit for two weeks, so that they can spend half of that time inspecting the shuttle and making sure that they can get back to Earth without problems), we can build, launch and support two new Mars rovers, or send another unmanned probe to Pluto.
