US Space program future?

America's space program is over, until and unless some other nation starts military expansion into space. Then, assuming it's not too late, we'll get another Apollo-like push out of FUD.

I don't see the difference from a current stand point between government and corporate space travel... save for one.

Companies can be held more accountable. Governments get a relative free pass, even though they aren't supposed to be there isn't much anyone can do about it in most peoples' minds. Companies on the other hand people see themselves as investors and customers. A company lies to you, or puts out a crap product, or something like that you as a customer or investor want answers. Further, as an investor or company you don't want to put out bad products or get a bad reputation because if you do you get less business and its hard to turn it around.


As far as economic growth/stability anyone with a brain knows that continuous growth is dumb and predicts a huge fall. You want large growth followed by relative stability followed by more growth. If you just grow nothing can keep up and no stable ground is being set so at some point when the growth out paces the ability to demand or vice verca you collapse and instead of hitting that stable base you continue to fall, sometime all the way, sometimes half the way, sometimes it's just a fall to the core stable base and depending on how it goes and other factors that society either completely crumbles, fades slowly, or hits that base and starts working towards a better base.

The good thing is that we're in a global world and when the collapse hits us (wear just experiencing the warning signs now) everything won't be lost. It'll just be that some areas are better off than others. The real big threat is after that point because of migration and resources...and that's even within country borders, especially places like america. The last place you want to be is Nevada or Arizona when this hits. You'll likely not survive if you're in that area. Places like New York and Detroit and places in the food belt will face local wars.

Once all that's over we'll likely see the better off communities reaching out to help rebuild infrastructures and new nations will be born or old ones will be reborn.... and likely old rivalries will be put aside and our now global roots will make a strong global community. ON the other hand that's a lot of mass death and a lot of mistrusting people and if the mistrust out weighs it the human race will die away either through fighting or stagnation and the best case scenario in that is that a few swell off places can hold on and eventually regrow as world super powers because those places after a century or so will be so far ahead that noone else will be able to stand against them save for the other super powers.

Of course, that's worse case scenario without the other problems. More than likely america will slowly fall as most current government become more of a global hum in the background as new ideological nation states pop up (or possibly retake over) and they will become the warring parties with many many war grounds where one party suppresses the others or a or multiple parties are able to some how block out the or get away from those other parties. These battles are already going on all over the place and it's more of a open hot cold war... I think we need a new term to describe it because it's not military so much as it is a propaganda and ideological war fare and that's neither hot nor cold >.>

I expect China to beat us to Mars.

There is always the Watchmen scenario to unite people together and work towards space development. I am talking about the graphic novel and not the movie. Just need to make a giant mutated telepathic squid.

Would have been nice if the VentureStar was able to make it past testing. Would have at least extended the life of NASA's manned exploration, but privatization of space travel would allow numerous different manned ship concepts to be designed. The end of NASA doesn't mean that it will be the end of non-profitable space experimentation. If it has some benefit to humanity, then it will be done.

What shot down the VentureStar was problems with the composite fuel tanks. Carbon (the tanks were carbon fiber based) doesn't really react well liquid hydrogen. Now some of the other components proved themselves like the aerospike engine and the new heat resistant materials to handle re-entry. But the only way to get it's SSTO design to work was to have a very light weight design and conventional fuel tanks were just to heavy to do the job.

Right now there are companies that have proposed crew vehicles as well as launch systems and some with one or the other. The Orion capsule is dead in name but have two spin offs of it, NASA/Lockheed Martin MPCV and Boeing's CST-100. You also have SpaceX's Dragon capsule and SpaceDev's Dream Chaser lifting body. Now SpaceX also has their own launch vehicle while the other three use man-rated versions of current unmanned space delivery systems such as the Atlas V or Delta IV.