With the moon mission scrapped, what now for NASA?

So on these grim anniversaries, it seems to be the end of a decades-long era for NASA, going back to the early sixties. The agency will no longer develop or operate the vehicles it needs to get its astronauts into space, but will instead refocus on the means of getting them beyond low-earth orbit, as it should have after the announcement of the VSE. This is good news for those of us interested in human expansion of space, because it was never going to be affordable on NASA’s previous trajectory, which promised continued missions of billions of dollars each for a few astronauts.

Instead, the new market provided by ISS will supplement the private markets, such as Bigelow Aerospace for human transport to orbit, finally reducing its cost and making it affordable not just for government agencies, but perhaps for at least some of the rest of us. As I’ve long said, NASA’s job is not to send a man to Mars, but to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to do so. The new direction for the space agency is a long-needed step in that direction.