Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The Space Program Is Over? Nobody Told Us!

With the space shuttle program ending, erroneous reports of NASA’s space program being “over” have surfaced on various websites and news outlets. But astronauts on the International Space Station want to assure everyone that NASA is alive and well. A new video series called “Inside the Space Station” premiers with this pilot episode, and has astronaut host Mike Massimino talking with Ron Garan and Mike Fossum, when they were on board the ISS (Garan returned home in September and Fossum in November). The video confirms humans are still doing many things in space (there’s been a continuous human presence on the ISS since Nov. of 2000); and also includes great images and footage from the space station.

9 Replies to “The Space Program Is Over? Nobody Told Us!”

  1. I don’t know, the way the Russians are going with this voting problem might put everything on a risk.

  3. We may have “people” in space, but we are no longer a “Space Faring Nation”. Like Japan or the UK. Unable to get a man in space if our lives depended on it. Now it seems only the Russians are the Space Nation, publicly launching for weaker nations like Japan, and the US. It seems that tanks and bombs are the primary concern of the USA, not space exploration or a maned delivery vehicle.

    1. Lets not forget that China has active, human certified launch vehicles! China is currently beating the US in space capability. It wouldn’t suprise me if Obama decided it’s cheaper to allow Russia to launch Americans into space and scrap NASA altogether. It seems to be his pattern.

      1. Obama has little to nothing to do with it, the end of the shuttle program was decided before he came to office. To add to that there are at least four American companies that are set to launch human capable rockets to ISS as part of the commercial services program. It’s “cheaper” for NASA to contract with other companies to design, build and manage space launch systems. Along with those commercial companies NASA is still working on their own launch systems(Boeing is already pretty far along on their CTS capsule) to go on to the moon, Mars or even an asteroid. They’re pretty much leaving the low Earth orbit stuff to the commercial industry which I think is good because NASA can focus on the bigger picture when it comes to space exploration.

        The Atlas V rocket(which has a 100% launch success rate), just launched the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is in the process of being man rated, if it hasn’t been already. This means they will likely be using it to launch humans into space aboard Boeing’s CTS-100 and other commercial space craft, from the US.

      2. AFAIK officially Obama had 2-3 months to reverse the Bush administration decision and its program of termination, at a likely exorbitant cost: he got into office in August and the assembly lines were shut down at that year’s end IIRC. But official and real has unfortunately a tendency to diverge around politics.

    2. As Musk notes, SpaceX could launch people today, whether or not lives depend on it, at the same accepted risk that the Shuttle had.

  4. http://www.spacex.com/
    i don’t know why ya guys are saying we are no longer a space faring nation… these guys are an American company and based in America and they are capable of launching humans into space as well as cargo…and they can do it cheaper than china and Russia

    1. you’re absolutely right about that… unlike SpaceX ULA uses Russian rocket motors thereby not contributing to the generation of jobs in the US of A, as Elon Musk correctly pointed out. The US ‘is a space faring nation’, unless you guys here think because Elon was born in RSA, his company is un-American, haha. The latter is a word used by the Republican s to discredit people…

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