Space for Rent: Back to the Future of Spaceflight

Tweet of the Day: The Power of the Short Story

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If someone would have told me in 1994 that the future of spaceflight looked more like this:

 

Than this:

I would have laughed at them. There was no way that NASA would abandon the shuttle for something out of the 1960s. They pressed on after the Challenger disaster and their plans for the International Space Station hinged on shuttle availability which meant going back in time was not an option.

Or was it?

 

 

Meet Ares and Orion, spiritual successors to Saturn and Apollo that took man to the Moon. It is easy to laugh at mid century projections of lunar colonies by 1980. But in hindsight they maks the shuttle program more like a interlude between NASA’s true missions rather than the step forward promised to us so long ago.

 

Maybe it was too much, too fast, but perhaps humanity is back on track.

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