This is good news. This is perhaps what’s been missing. NASA is going to launch a spacecraft called Orion in December. It’s kind of like the Space Shuttle, but bigger, faster, stronger, and the idea is it will be able to stay in space for long periods and travel to multiple destinations, and make it out to “the outer Solar System” they said in the article but I wish they could be a bit more specific than that.
If it could do that, it could ferry people and supplies back and forth to Mars, to aid in the colonization. It could explore the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and establish mining colonies. It could provide tours of the solar system, for a billion dollars a pop. It could open up the Star Trek era, at least on the one Solar System scale, but it’s a start. You have to walk before you can run, you have to run before you can fly, and you have to leave your planet before you leave your solar system, boldly going where no men have gone before. It will be a stagecoach to the stars.
With this following hot on the success of Rosetta on comet Churyamov-Gerasimenko (sp?), it does seem the Space Race is on again. Who will get to Mars first? NASA? The ESA? The Dutch reality show team? Richard Branson? Some unknown contender?
I’m excited about it, it feels like the 60s again, except now we have way superior technology.
We won’t have really reached the Star Trek mentality, however, until all human missions into Space are international missions.
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