US manned spaceflight - but no Space Shuttle
Your faithful Space Blogger here, to put more meat on the bones of Barack Obama's space plans. Today we tackle the big topic, the human interest - manned spaceflight.
The Constellation program's "heavy duty" Ares V rocket Credit: NASA/MSFC
Barack Obama has committed to making investments that will reduce this 5 year gap, and to minimise reliance on foreign space capabilities. He also promises to work with the US space industry to retain its workforce and technical capabilities during the transition from the shuttle to its successor.
The options include keeping his options open for additional Space Shuttle flights to keep the workforce occupied and working to support additional funding so that it does not impact on the Constellation program’s development.
Obama also plans to push through development of the Shuttle's successor systems in the face of difficulties brought about by the Bush administration’s apparent under funding of NASA.
Stimulating efforts within the (US) private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities is also on Obama’s hitlist. NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services which broke the NASA tradition by engaging entrepreneurs from SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler in 2006, is a held up as a model of this kind of public - private collaboration.
