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Year in Space Calendar
  

Planetary News: Human Spaceflight (2004)

Response to 2005 NASA Budget

By Louis Friedman
Executive Director of The Planetary Society
23 November 2004

The complete acceptance of the new human space flight exploration policy, termed the Vision for Space Exploration, is a great victory for Planetary Society members. We supported the new policy since its first announcement last January, and indeed, even before that when we advocated a great exploration goal for the human space flight program.

The devil is in the details – and implementing the new policy will have many details. Strong support for the robotic space science program is mandated in the new Vision – we will watch that it is fulfilled. Our Aim For Mars! campaign gathered thousands of signatures, and helped build public support for the new policy. We strongly advocate international cooperation, and a recent workshop of 19 space agencies convened by NASA indicates that this will be part of the Vision. The study group we put together under Astronaut Owen Garriott and veteran aerospace engineer Michael Griffin recommended a quick start to the Crew Exploration Vehicle and an early retirement for the shuttle orbiter. We will keep pushing for this.

We are pleased to have cooperated with other space interest groups including aerospace companies in the U.S. and space agencies outside the United States, and with many colleagues in the space business to help build support for the exploration vision. We also gained from bipartisan support for space exploration – no mean feat during an election year. But most of all we thank our members for their support. Sometimes we were criticized for supporting human spaceflight and devaluing robotic missions to the planets, and at other times we were criticized for just the reverse. That made us feel we got it right – and that the overwhelming majority of our members realize that exploration is a continuum, with humans and their robots working together.