People will go, I have no doubt of that. However the electronics, the autonomous hardware, the remote capability, all are burgeoning with potential right now. The opportunity is obvious.

Machines will go first, paving the way for people. You can say that this has already happened but there’s far far more to do yet. Far more that can be done with the robotic systems.

Second of all, the public supports endeavors such as NASA because of the Astronauts. While people in the know may cheer Mars Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity for what they can get done on a small budget, what Neil Armstrong did actually moved people to aspire to scientific accomplishment. Future careers were launched in the hearts of four year olds that day.

And if I might add a third point: human astronauts on a Mars mission can do some things no lander will ever be able to do – operate in real time, get themselves unstuck from that rock, apply ingenuity. The question of whether life exists on Mars (and there are many tantalizing clues) probably can’t be definitively answered until a crew capable of instant sophisticated decision making can get there.

There’s all kinds of amazing science that can only be done in orbit, from analyzing the composition of the atmosphere of extrasolar planets, to using the microwave background radiation to answer the most foundational question sin physics. I’d rather not use those resources for Evel Knievel-style stunts.

Yes, it’s a shame we’re shutting it down without identifying a successor. But I have confidence there will be one. Not for me though, which is just something I will have to get used to. Only way I’ll be going into orbit is in freeze dried powder form.

This is really an old argument. It comes from NASA’s earlier budget cuts in the post-Apollo era when ever more of NASA’s budget was put into Shuttle development, and robotic exploration was curtailed. The assumption, and doubtful, is that Obama’s “plan” is going to develop better science. I think the truth is that he doesn’t want to find money for Constellation, at least in part because he doesn’t want to find the money for it. Without a big name project, or headline catching goal, watch NASA’s budget slowly shrivel.

As for the “conservative” Obama and private enterprise comments. Well I do believe that private enterprise will be what ultimately opens up space for “the masses” and full comercialization. But the President’s Health Care agenda is hardly “conservative”, and shows he believes in State intervention on things he really believes in. This “privatization” reminds me of various “solutions” to global warming which ultimately is putting a big “carbon tax” on energy, and just hoping that “private enterprise” will come up with some new energy source as a result. No need for the government to put more money into solar research, developing thorium reactors or fusion research! I feel the President is looking for ways to cut NASA’s budget, and feels the whole thing is a waste of money.

Ultimately, the single undeniable rationale for human space flight is … leaving. Whether for escape or colonization. You simply can’t do that robotically. The question then becomes how important it is to leave, or to learn how to leave. A side question is whether it’s important for our nation to develop the capability to leave before some other nation does. Is it about preserving humanity, or is it about preserving us?

These things are never discussed by space policy makers. Perhaps it’s time that they are.

With regard to space, we’re having a hard time wrapping our arms around the word “exploration”. It’s a word that all our efforts hide behind. To the extent that exploration is a self-defined “good thing”, is it something that requires in situ humans to accomplish? The human space flight program at NASA has pretty much hijacked that word in the last half-decade. The historical narratives for exploration on which our space cowboy literature is based don’t cleanly apply to space.

I will note that, concerning gaps in human space flight for the U.S., we’re not looking at the first one. We had a six year gap in human space flight before the shuttle came on line in 1981. What makes the upcoming gap less survivable?

Manned spaceflight has its advantages for science. Heavy-lift launchers used for Moon and Mars missions will allow for more larger and more sophisticated telescopes to be launched. Repair missions to the increasingly popular Lagrange points will inevitably be required. The Moon provides an ideal location for physics and astronomy experiments. Hands-on missions to the Moon, Mars, and NEOs will provide much cheaper scientific discoveries per dollar than robotic missions. But of course, the ultimate goal of manned missions should be colonization, which will require numerous jumps in engineering that will be useful on Earth as well.

This is a horrible canard. The cost argument is silly. A panel, including physicist Frank Close, in the UK found that science programs got less funding when not coupled with a manned program.

Furthermore, you’ve decided how to designate what is a reasonable cost (ignoring the fact that the ISS will be up there for at least 10 more years and possibly more), but let’s look at practical applications. Taken to an extreme, what has Hubble provided other than pretty pictures? How does studying a black hole millions of light years away help me here on Earth now? If that’s your criteria, the Hubble is a huge waste of funds. Instead, from the ISS we’re now getting salmonella vaccines (how is that egg recall going?) , studies that can be directly applied to elderly or those with osteoporosis, and experience being applied to help the trapped miners in Chile. Or is that not worth the cost?

Now, I love the Hubble, but pitting one side against the other means both lose.

The other concern I have with the Obama plan is that it basically suggests starting over. However, much of the success of the Russian program, for instance, lies in its slow and strady refinement of 50 year old rockets. The Proton is still the cheapest per kg ride to orbit, and Soyuz has also changed incrementally. The Americans, in contrast, threw out all of the Apollo era technology and started from scratch with the shuttle, which was a disaster. So repeating the same mistake by starting from scratch again in hopes of an emergent, game-changing technology seems a bit short sighted.

Within a year, our nation will no longer have the capability to launch humans into space.

While I know it’s tremendously expensive, I think it’s a mistake to ground the shuttle before there is a clear successor, especially when we’ve made an obligation to keep men on the international space station. As long as there are people there, there needs to be a redundant capacity to reach them. If space flight has taught us nothing, it’s the importance of having redundancy everywhere in the system as long as we’re engaged in it. If we’re in, we should stay in. If we’re out, we should get out. Half-way is asking for people to die.

More than that, I think manned space flight is a tool that we may need to use on some occasion that we haven’t yet foreseen. It may or may not be needed, but on the off chance that it is, it’s proven, known technology that should be available. If they don’t want to fly the shuttle until there’s a new capacity to replace it, one should at least be maintained in readiness for the potential of use rather than permanently grounded. I’m not about space racing, I’m about prudence in the face of what we don’t yet know in the future. Is there some Earth orbit equivalent to the BP oil-spill which we have yet to realize that may need tools like manned space flight to address?