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The final frontier.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Now That the Shuttle is Retired, What Next?

In 1969, the father of the American space program, Wernher von Braun, wrote an article entitled, "Now That Man Has Reached the Moon, What Next?"  In the article, von Braun gives specific details on where he believes space exploration will go in the decades following the successful lunar landings.  Von Braun speculates on everything from the proliferation of communication satellites, to manned missions to Mars and Lunar bases.  And while we haven't put a man on Mars yet, a great deal of von Braun's speculations came to pass.  Von Braun thought that one day such impressive feats as the launching of space based telescopes and unmanned missions to Mars would be commonplace, as indeed they are, today.


Wernher von Braun with an early lunar rocket design (AP).

While von Braun certainly had vision, he could not forsee the changing tide in the nation just after Apollo.  As soon as Neil Armstrong took his small step, plans were in motion to slash NASA's budget.  Many in congress and around the country simply saw no use for NASA after it accomplished the great task of beating the Soviet Union to the Moon.  So while von Braun saw no limits to what NASA was capable of in space, all the public saw was a bloated government agency without direction.

Yesterday saw the launch of the last Space Shuttle.  Shuttle Atlantis launched from Cape Kennedy with four astronauts, and will soon rendevous with the International Space Station.  After 135 launches, and thirty years, it is the end of an era.  Where NASA is now is not wholly unlike where it was after Apollo.  True, the Russians are now our allies in space instead of our rivals, but the risk of stagnation and loss of vision is the same.

Two days ago, NASA cheif Charles Bolden spoke at a press conference to assure the public that American manned space flight was, in fact, not ending.  Private companies will pick up NASA's slack to ferry astronauts to low-Earth orbit before too long, while NASA sets its sights on deep space exploration - a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025, and to Mars by the 2030's.  This is exactly the vision for space exploration that President Obama and NASA have laid out over the past couple of years.

As long as Congress follows through on funding NASA properly, and doesn't block the privatization efforts in spaceflight, I don't think the next decade will look like that which followed Apollo.  NASA will not stagnate.  It has myriad planned and ongoing science missions.  Missions like Dawn, that will study the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, and the planned GRAIL mission that will make the most accurate gravitational map of the Moon to date.  NASA has a clear path for manned exploration of deep space, as well.  Development continues on the spacecraft that will one day take astronauts far from Earth's orbit, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.  We are going to be okay.


Artist's conception of the Dawn spacecraft (NASA/JPL).

With luck, the future of space exploration will be as bright as Wernher von Braun had once speculated it would be.  Von Braun ended his article with this - "Exploration of space is the challenge of our day.  If we continue to put our faith in it and pursue it, it will reward us handsomely."

Read what's next for NASA, here.