“Take a good last look.”
That’s the second to last launch of our manned space program. When it’s over we’ll be dependent on the Ruskies to get us to LEO - just the way the Leftist in this country like it.
If there aren’t any significant delays in SpaceX’s space technology development we should be able to have a private, manned space program by about 2014.
If it were up to me I’d ditch the outer space treaty. Tell NASA to drop earth sciences and muslim outreach and concentrate on long duration lunar missions with an eye on a permanent lunar base.
Id tell private industry that any money they can make in space is theirs for the taking if they have the desire to go get it.
The sooner the Shuttle is abandoned the better. If the shuttle's low performance begat the low orbit space junk of an ISS and that low orbit allows a private start-up to get its leg-up into the market, well, maybe that justifies some small part of it. Maybe also the lousy level of engineer-based systems that the sucky Shuttle program decayed to is itself helpful, as it created a internal-to-government bureaucracy socio-technology vacuum block, a gap, for a generation. In other words it blocked the government from doing something better, but not as good as private biz will do.
you know that is just plain wrong, the shuttle has not be used for ISS crew transfres in a while now, iss crews are launched on the Soyuz for the last 4 yrs or so