A new chapter of exploration opens with the final shuttle mission
THE end of NASA鈥檚 shuttle programme has prompted much hand-wringing in the year that marks announcing plans to land Americans on the moon.
Many believe the space age has failed to live up to the promise of Kennedy鈥檚 grand challenge, let alone the fantasies of Star Trek. Others rake over the ashes of two shuttle disasters and condemn NASA as a sclerotic bureaucracy that belongs to a bygone age. A few fear that the space race is finally over. They are wrong.
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After decades of astonishing achievements, from Apollo to the , it鈥檚 true that the US space agency is at a crossroads. President Barack Obama鈥檚 direction for NASA is short on specifics, talking only vaguely of , and under-resourced. NASA, after cancelling the Ares launcher, is turning shuttles into museum pieces without a clear idea of what comes next. The US now has no means to get astronauts into space other than Russia鈥檚 ageing Soyuz spacecraft. A question mark hangs over US ambitions.
Charles Bolden, NASA鈥檚 administrator, believes the agency must cede low-Earth orbit missions to the private sector so it can free up resources to explore deep space. That鈥檚 reasonable in the light of growing commercial space activity (see 鈥淔arewell shuttle. Now the space race takes off again鈥�), notably in the US where, tellingly, internet entrepreneur .
Bolden has also pledged American leadership in space travel for the next half century by stating that . That aim looks optimistic, but only because NASA is not alone in exploring the final frontier. In all, . . Citizens of 38 countries have now flown into space. Asian nations, in particular, have shown huge ambition.
聯The US鈥檚 aim of leadership in space travel for the next half century looks optimistic聰
Given the developments of the past 50 years, who can say where today鈥檚 visionaries, innovators and entrepreneurs from all around the globe will take us by 2061? The real space race has only just begun.