Description
Book SynopsisThe United States has publicly funded its human spaceflight program on a continuous basis for more than a half-century, through three wars and a half-dozen recessions, from the early Mercury and Gemini suborbital and Earth orbital missions, to the lunar landings, and thence to the first reusable winged crewed spaceplane that the United States operated for three decades. Today the United States is the major partner in a massive orbital facility - the International Space Station - that is becoming the focal point for the first tentative steps in commercial cargo and crewed orbital space flights. And yet, the long-term future of human spaceflight beyond this project is unclear. Pronouncements by multiple presidents of bold new ventures by Americans to the Moon, to Mars, and to an asteroid in its native orbit, have not been matched by the same commitment that accompanied President Kennedy's now fabled 1961 speech-namely, the substantial increase in NASA funding needed to make it happen. Ar
Table of Contents1 Front Matter; 2 Summary; 3 1 Overview of Analysis and Findings; 4 2 Why Do We Go There?; 5 3 Public and Stakeholder Attitudes; 6 4 Technical Analysis and Affordability Assessment of Human Exploration Pathways; 7 Appendixes; 8 Appendix A: Statement of Task; 9 Appendix B: Methodological Notes About the Public Opinion Data; 10 Appendix C: Stakeholder Survey Methods; 11 Appendix D: Stakeholder Survey Mail Questionnaire (Version A); 12 Appendix E: Frequency Distributions of Responses to the Stakeholder Survey by Respondent Group; 13 Appendix F: Acronyms and Abbreviations; 14 Appendix G: List of Briefings to the Committee and Panels; 15 Appendix H: List of Input Papers; 16 Appendix I: Committee, Panel, and Staff Biographies
