Question about Space Travelling

[vivike]

What do you guys think about this:<br />If Space travelling wants to evolve there have to be better transportationpossibilities? Yes/No and why? (I don't know regarding Space Shuttle, money, environment,... Whatever you want to say about it)

 

[qso1]

Welcome to the board:<br /><br />Agree with what you say. Reason? Government funded space travel is obviously not going to advance us as much as it once seemed due to what I refer to as the cost barrier.<br /><br />The one barrier NASA was unable to break. In the next probably twenty years, I suspect will see a mix of Government and private industry space effort. I'm assuming the Bush plan will be developed which I kind of doubt will actually occur.<br /><br />We have done some great things with the shuttle but its time for retirement has come. One can only hope that private industry will begin to take over LEO operations by the time shuttle is retired.<br /><br />If NASA does get the green light for lunar, though they have not officially stated it in their plans, they may require some private industry access to LEO if that access successfully comes about.<br /><br />Budget, very simple. NASA in its heyday had much larger allocations of budget than they get now. NASAs record budget was about $5.5 B dollars in 1966 which today would be around $20 B dollars. Currently NASA gets $16B dollars and for fiscal 2007 I believe the request was for $17B dollars.<br /><br />NASA repeatedly tried to develop shuttle replacements (NASP, Venture Star, etc) and has been unable to primarily because of cost.<br /><br />In short, the time has come to let private enterprise take over LEO and develop space tourism and let NASA develop the spacecraft to do the lunar Mars efforts. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>