aaannnnd? NASA is shut down. And folks round here dont want it started back up. To quote some memorable slams from this forum.... “Its a Waste of money”..... “It produces nothing of value”.... “Space doesn’t need to be explored we need to fix earth first” and so on and so forth.... The problem is that he who holds the high ground or orbital position WINS!!!!
Now there are planets out there.... getting to them is a problem but people wont support what needs to happen because of shortsightedness or just plain old ignorance. I don’t like NASA... I never have but its what we got and private industry isn’t making a whole lot of progress nor is there a whole lot of incentive.
There will be manned flights by private companies starting around 2014. Dragon, the SpaceX ship, is being produced on assembly lines now. Boeing is hiring crew to pilot its CTS-100. Lockheed's Orion is undergoing testing.
Russia has had problems getting rockets into orbit recently. China's Shenzhou program has teething pains.