A human missions to comets might be an even worse idea, considering the collision hazards of the massive quantity of ejecta.

A recent editorial in the New York Times suggesting one-way manned missions to Mars for our most senior astronauts strikes me as perhaps a more honest expression of the somewhat-less-than-high regard of our latest federal administration for NASA.

I must confess that many of the public statemetns from the Augustine Comission sound to me like a collection of excuses for cancelling Constellation. The main thrust is that because we might not be ready to land on the moon by 2020, the program is unworthwhile and should be canceled. (That is what is being reported in the press.)

The original VSE policy was to schedule target dates based upon available funding. The phrase was “pay-as-you-go”. There is nothing sacred about 2020. A first landing in 2025 should be just fine. What is important to me is that another 4 decades are not wated with NASA chained to LEO. No disrespect for the many recent (ISS/Shuttle/MER/…) NASA accomplishments.

There was another argument that ARIES made no sense because the design of ALTAIR would not even be started by the time that the Areis I+V hardware was ready. This assumes that NASA is incapable of rescheduling and coordinating complex projects as circumstances arise. Perhaps they never heard of the shuttle return-to-flight program.

And although Sally Ride is a well-intentioned, technically competent person, she is no Werner Von Braun. She voluntarily quit NASA several decades ago.

I wish that I could say that I heard a compelling argument for greater NASA funding, but that was not at all this person’s perception.

If we can actually get those scientists on-site mentally with telepresence, even if not physically, we can take advantage of the immense capability of the human brain for on-the-spot analysis, pattern recognition, and decision-making.

Well yes, but isn’t that a bit of a straw-man argument for manned spaceflight? We don’t need telepresence much at all now with the Mars rovers & other deep-space craft. Why would we need it now?

While my best possible outcome is to do it all and do it now, that’s my idealist and space nut side talking.

Clearly, neither the political will nor the economy will support such a “full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes” approach to NASA’s plans for the immediate future. Nor is the public interest and support there either. It’s hard to support a 20 million dollar space shot when you are about to lose your house for want of making the monthly payment.

I may not like it, but the Deep Space Gateway is a very reasoned and realistic approach to moving forward with space exploration within the scope ofm the world situation. The IMPORTANT point is that it is STILL MOVING FORWARD! Maybe not as fast or in the way many of us space enthnusiast would like, but forward none the less!

The concept of combining manned missions with robotic landers, etc. is an excellent idea, for a number of reasons.

It continues the development of the heavy lift, long duration vehicles and technologies that we will need eventually, no matter what route we take as astra. It gives man a semi-permanent present in space, albeit maybe in Phobos orbit and not living on the surface of Mars. It still gets us there and the tech we need to live and function in orbit or on the surface of Mars’s moons or astroids is a lot like what we will need to LIVE on the surface of the big gravity bodies.

It keeps the infrastucture of induistries of space going and growing, it keeps present NASA support and facilities staff and industries growing, even if it’s in a slightly different direction and it give the science and technologies of robotics and telepresence a REAL big shot in the arm!

OK, not my first choice, but under the circumstances, I think it’s a damn good one. At the same time we can also move forward on climate control, carbon free renewable energy generation, economic stability and the other must-haves and issues we face to day. We can NOT explore space and stay there without a stable and technological and environmentally sound infrastructure.

Justin, you got my vote! Justin for President in 2012! LOL (Wait, isn’t that the year the Myans say the world ends? Coincidence?) (grin)

While the combination of hybrid manned-robotic missions might be the way to go, I don’t think you can call robotic mission “untenable”. Obviously deep space missions such as Voyager, Galileo and Cassini as well as the highly successful Mars rover missions have shown that robotic missions can work quite well. I think the better argument for this type of mission is the flexibility and adaptability of human-tended robotic missions. Where an unfurled antenna, bad battery or sand pit might terminate a straight robotic mission, an astronaut could affect repairs and, in the case of the Spirit rover, give a spacecraft a good swift kick in the pants!

(And that’s not to say that astronauts would be reduced to Mr Goodwrench – as Dr Squyers points out an astronaut could accomplish a great deal of science too boot)

Phillip, the reason the “stable” L-points are so attractive is because so little propellant would be required to maintain position. In terms of energy for lunar access, the L-points have their advantages, too.

Personally, I tend to agree with James Vedda of the Aerospace Corporation. We need to develop a cis-lunar infrastructure that is geared towards the utilization of space for solving mankind’s strategic problems. If we start doing that, no one is going to question the exploration side and we’ll have learned what we need to really go out to Mars and Beyond.