Month: January 2005

To judge the future by recent events, one might think that by 2010 U.S. tourists will be flying to orbital U.S. hotels on U.S. spacecraft, while at the same time the Bush administration initiative to return humans to the moon will be charging forward at warp speed toward a 2015 return.

Think again. The future of space in the next decade could just as easily be dominated by a resurgent Russian space industry, innovative and efficient, with the ability to provide quality service to its customers at a low cost.
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The recent Russian decision to cease transporting U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station after 2005 highlights two harsh realities few Americans have been willing to face: the Clinton administration did not plan well in building the ISS and the new Bush space exploration initiative has compounded the problem.

Together, they put U.S. access to its own space station in serious jeopardy and threaten to damage American-Russian relations, perhaps severely.
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The wheels of human space exploration might turn very slowly, but all signs indicate they are beginning to turn faster and – if all goes well -finally might reach escape velocity in 2005.

Without a doubt, the future remains cloudy for a number of NASA issues. Until a new NASA administrator is chosen, for example, there is no way to predict what will happen to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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January 14 will mark one year since President George W. Bush stood before a packed audience at NASA headquarters in Washington and announced, to great fanfare, a new American space initiative.

What few have noticed or recognized since then is how the response to that proposal in the past year has illustrated a complete and fundamental change in the nature of the space exploration debate.
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