With Neil Armstrong’s recent passing and the United States Presidential election happening soon, more and more people have become focused on space and the portion of the American budget NASA will receive in the future. Though NASA’s budget has been rumored to be getting decreased, what will the future be for humans and space exploration?
Before the economic crisis of 2007 happened, the United States had big plans for space – with the biggest of these being a plan presented by the government in 2004 called the Vision for Space Exploration. This plan called for the creation of a new type of ship that would allow for humans to once again leave Earth’s atmosphere, with the estimated completion date being set for 2014. This ship would not be a space shuttle, but the beginning of a new program, which was hoped to have a greater part in the future of space travel. With this completed, the plan hoped that in the next few years after the completion of this vehicle, man would once again be able to visit the moon, with these vehicles making it easier than ever to transport people back and forth. As humans once again walked across the moon, scientists and engineers would continue to develop this vessel to prepare it for its next mission – traveling to Mars. The United States hoped that in the following years after man had reached the moon, we would finally be able to reach the level of technology required to take a person to Mars. This plan was thought of as a plan which, if it went smoothly, would be one of the greatest advances in space exploration since 1969, when we first walked on the moon. Sadly, the plan did not become a success that many hoped it would be. In 2009, the plan was studied and found that the cost of the plan would greatly exceed NASA’s budget at the time, which did not even factor in any budget cuts that would be handed down to the agency as a result of the crash. The results of this study did not bode well for the program, with the plan being set for completion at a later date, with the implications being that the plan had all but been terminated. In terms of other plans, NASA had a bit more luck, but these plans did not have the same qualities and goals that the Vision for Space Exploration did.
While NASA did manage to receive an increase in funding in 2009 instead of a cut to their budget, all of their funding was put towards working on the International Space Station and helping private industry achieve low earth orbit, not focusing on helping man go further than we had ever gone before. Many astronauts worried about the future of the United States’ space program, with three notable astronauts, Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Eugene Cernan writing a letter to “the American people” to encourage the continuation of space exploration. These astronauts spoke about the dangers that cancelling the proposed plan would cause, stating that the cancellation of the program would send the USA “on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.” The letter is available here.
For the future of space exploration, do we have any other hopes? Though the United States may not be exploring, other countries have begun to take their place, with China initiating a program of their own, which hopes to have a manned expedition by the end of the 2020s. As more countries begin to see the void left by the United States in the manned exploration of space, our only hope is that other countries begin to take on this mantle and help us achieve what has never been achieved before.