Since the unveiling of President Obama's budget plan for NASA, which cancels the return to the Moon by American astronauts in favor of technology development programs designed to establish the capability to sustain deep space exploration efforts in the future, many involved in space policy have criticized it on various grounds. That is not to say the plan has no support. It does. One of the points at issue, however, is the plan's lack of a destination to reach, or a timetable to reach it.
Many experts argue NASA needs that kind of goal to focus its technology development efforts. Such an argument, whatever its merits, may rely a bit too much on the dramatic days of Apollo. The Space Race was one element in a complex competition between the U. S. and the Soviet Union meant to determine world leadership while avoiding thermonuclear war. There seems to be no comparable driver today that would give manned space exploration urgency. Even if there were such a driver, those experts don't agree on what the destination should be. Some say the Moon is the obvious place to develop skills and technology needed to settle the Solar System. Others argue no other place has the sparkle and value of Mars in the public mind. Still others point out the scientific and natural resource treasure trove to be found in asteroids.
Of course, those destinations are not mutually exclusive. A rational blueprint bringing in private industry could be laid out to include all those destinations. Such a move would finally throw open the Solar System to humanity. Whether President Obama would embrace that Kennedyesque boldness is yet to be seen.
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Greg, I think there's only one goal that matters, and that's the creation of a system ferrying passengers to and from orbit without government subsidy!
Until that goal is reached, manned spaceflight will remain trapped in the space agency paradigm of occasional, high-cost, basically government-only special missions.
Or look at it this way: the goal of achieving steady growth in personal space exploration (currently at the level of one passenger per year) so that it surpasses the level of government usage of manned spaceflight. This requires falling costs, obviously, in conjunction with rising volumes of traffic, which is precisely what companies like SpaceX and Reaction Engines are working on.
Until a dynamic, growing space economy is in place, based in the immediate future on personal space exploration ("space tourism"), the space agencies can dream all they want of lunar and martian adventures, but will never be able to progress beyond brief Apollo-style sorties followed by programme cancellation at the next change of president, or at the next financial, military or environmental crisis.
Stephen
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