Four Left

The space shuttle Endeavor lifted off this morning at 4:14 am ET, marking the last night liftoff off the space shuttle program.  Four launches remain for the space shuttles: March 18th, May 14th, July 29th, and September 16th.  The earliest projections for future manned U.S. space missions after September 16th started in 2015 with the Constellation Program, which President Obama canceled last week by way of exclusion from his 2011 budget.  Minus Constellation, any domestic space missions by NASA astronauts in the next decade are left to hitching rides on private spacecraft, which only caught up to 1960s standards in 2004.  At that, even private spacecraft are confined to low-orbital space and will likely remain so for at least another decade.

When will NASA again be capable of not just entering low-orbit space but leaving Earth's orbit for the moon and beyond?  A 2020 prediction would be optimistic at best, and anything closer to 2030 is more likely.  Some insiders are saying that a lack of direction on NASA's part is at fault for the agency's paltry advances over the last thirty years, that deciding on the Moon or Mars (or wherever) as a primary destination could have jump-started more consistent progress for NASA and the U.S. as a whole.  But the president has already set the destination and the tempo: maybe Mars, eventually. 

In the meantime, NASA's focus has shifted.  President Obama's budget actually includes $6 billion increases for NASA over the next five years, but when viewed closely, the goal is shifted from exploration to environmental monitoring.  This is terrific, if imminent global meltdown theories are valid.  But the Truth of these theories (and the trustworthiness of their authors) are subject to quite a lot of partisanship and opportunism, indeed too much to be trusted.  And frankly, if imminent, inevitable catastrophe is upon us, we had better get ready to leave this rock for another, and we're many decades away from even establishing an extraterrestrial colony.

Space exploration is a bountiful endeavor, something that rides the cutting edge of human progress.  When space exploration falls back, so does that progress.