America’s manned space program came to an abrupt halt in the early ’70s under Nixon when he axed the Apollo program that had taken us to the moon. The shuttle program, started by Nixon shortly after, quickly morphed into a jobs program, contracts spread around to nearly 400 congressional districts and the congressional delegations from ‘space states’ (FL, AL, OH, CA. MD, TX, MI, etc.) politically committed to sustaining the program without regard to party lines.

Loss of Challenger in ’86 put a big kink in the scope of shuttle planning, ending its future as the sole launch vehicle for military and national payloads (the Air Force launch programs had essentially died, which is why it took three years to ramp up and get back to launching anything, manned or unmanned). But it recovered even with this loss of mission, the military component replaced with a new purpose, as primary constructor and supplier for what became the International Space Station. And the purpose of ISS? Underneath it all, to justify continuation of the shuttle program. Got that? We needed the shuttle to built the space station, which we needed to justify the shuttle.

Neither of these programs, shuttle or ISS have come remotely close to meeting their stated goals … or budgets. But the jobs flourished and, though ISS came within one vote in the House of being cancelled in 1994, the politicians kept both programs alive, primary purpose to support spending in their districts.

While all this has been going on, unmanned space science has moved forward at a steady pace, its only inhibiter the costs of shuttle and ISS cutting deeply into its funding. NASA’s rationale is that we need public support for all space effort, unmanned science included, and that support can only be maintained with a manned space program and all the hoohah that attends it.

So the Space Turkey is dead. Judge it two ways. Having lost 40% of its assets in disasters, the shuttle program was a very costly and dangerous R&D effort that produced little other than a lot of launches and flight-time in low earth orbit. But it also transformed the employment and contracts side of the business with a large number of stable jobs and long-range aerospace contracts that gave over three decades of largess to the communities where the work was. As one trained in science, I rue the opportunity cost of these programs on serious exploration of the universe. As a long-time resident of the Space Coast, I’ve liked the dollar benefits of the programs in our community but now have deep concerns over the proximate loss of around 8,000 jobs paid for by NASA money …. and the 14,000 indirect jobs – the waitress moms and gas stations owners – that will follow. Most of my neighbors think this Faustian bargain was worth it – I’m not so sure.

Apollo/shuttle: no.

Private space flight to where? Can go as a (paying) private citizen via Soyuz to ISS right now. At least two private plans underway for sub-orbital ‘tourist’ launches. To the moon? Long long time away. To mars? Never (or at least not round-trip, the cosmic radiation on the journey an unsurmountable problem that somehow gets glossed over by space weenies).

When I said we I meant USA. One big leap I would like to see is affordable, commercial space flight for average, traveling Americans. Like reducing flight times across oceans to one or two hours. If this was affordable many people would do it for the view and the float on the ride. I would think that to be a Huge market. And of course it would be a good thing to be able to ship military assets in such speed.

Prompt global strike and prompt global USA boot up your ass. Would be potent.

Copy that, sir. Complete agreement. But…. we’ll never learn a thing about space, really learn, if MEN keep their feet on the ground, gazing at the stars, like they have since Gallileo’s time.

“One, exquisite system cannot be allowed to consume so much of the available resources that an alternative cannot be devised, funded, developed and fielded at the same time as existing operations are funded.” You could say the same about the DoD: JSF, Future Combat System, DDG-1000, NMCI, Navy ERP, …