Augustine Optins

The report by the Augustine Committee tasked by President Obama to recommend the future direction of NASA's manned spaceflight program is due out next week. According to news reports, seven basic options are under consideration. They range from focusing on using ISS and more slowly building towards a return to the Moon, to going directly to Mars.

Perhaps the most interesting, most optimistic-- and most exciting-- aspects to virtually all the options is the reliance on international partnerships and commercial spacecraft that will be capable of ferrying NASA astronauts to and from low Earth orbit sometime in the next decade.

Presumably, that means the members of the committee think NewSpace companies will succeed, largely on schedule, in creating a viable industry. The other possibility would be that the committee is trying to sabotage manned spaceflight by making it dependent on vehicles the committee does not think will actually be operational. To take the brighter view, a world which has access to space from various sources will be able to pursue building the future from a list of many options. Some of those options are bound to pay off.