[Virginia Ridgerunner]

NASA lost its nerve after the 1986 Challenger explosion and has not done anything in the manned-spaceflight field except science fair experiments. We should have been to Mars by now, but NASA's feckless bureaucrats have never been able to get past the risk management part of such an expedition.

Cut it---it's become just another government jobs program.

[ronnyquest]

Exploration is difficult and dangerous, whether on this planet or elsewhere. People need to get over that and stop whining about it. Explorers who die go exactly how they wanted to.

[Hulka]

Indeed, but a iittle more complicated than that.

Requires an investment that takes years and congress is loath to authorize multi-years contracts that would make contracting easier, less costly and enable a timeline with stable deliverable profile.

Piecemeal budgeting for long-term projects is a sure fire way to kill a program.

[tanknetter]

NASA lost its nerve after the 1986 Challenger explosion and has not done anything in the manned-spaceflight field except science fair experiments.

I disagree.

The shuttle was, always, a capability dead-end that could do no more than lift a somewhat respectable payload into LEO and bring a somewhat respectable payload back when necessary. For enormous cost.

The only thing that Challenger's loss did was make NASA abandon the commercial/military satellite launch line of business, and move to a slower and more safety conscious launch schedule. But the overall impact of that on what NASA could do WITH the shuttle was negligible given design/mission limitations and costs. Even at the time Columbia first flew, it was obvious that the Shuttle was never going to be the cost-effective space-truck that had been sold to the public.