Leonard David opines whether the U.S. sends humans back to the Moon, or should the nation go full-throttle and send crews all the way to Mars, where none have gone before? U.S. scientists and policy makers have grappled ad nauseam with the next great otherworldly destination for decades, without making much meaningful progress. Now that it is approaching a half-century since an American last left low Earth orbit, the debate seems lost in space.
Soon that shall change, many advocates of human spaceflight believe, through a hybrid of new initiatives by the new administration as well as commercial efforts led by private industry. The new administration vision for U.S. astronauts remains at present a foggy TBD, but there are plans afoot to relaunch a National Space Council. Helmed by the new Vice Pres., the council would set a new space agenda not only for NASA but also for U.S. rocket companies, big and small, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Orbital ATK.
In the meantime, speculation about the U.S. future in space has reached its highest point in recent memory, as made clear here last week by the proceedings of the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) near Houston, Texas. At the meeting, scientists unleashed the latest findings regarding the Moon, Mars, asteroids, comets and myriad other cosmic objects of interest, often with a hopeful eye toward rekindling human voyages to other worlds. Although robotic probes are the persistent currency of discovery in planetary science, many researchers increasingly see astronauts as crucial agents of exploration in the not-too-distant future.
Planetary geoscience will completely change once we get crew beyond low Earth orbit, says David Kring, a senior staff geoscientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
(WP eds- The plan should be the Moon (for practice) and then Asteroids (for Practice), and then to Mars to begin a migration.)
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