Existing comment:
The astronaut is John Blaha who's actually been up on six space shuttle flights. (STS-29, STS-33, STS-43, STS-58, STS-70/MIR, and STS-81.) I asked him about the plan for Mars. He said that NASA had been concentrating on earth-orbit flights, not having gone outside of earth's orbit since the last Apollo flight in 1972. Of course this was an attempt to make the flights actually commercially viable but that's apparently not the directive anymore.
The plan is to wrap up the space shuttle flights in the next few years, then do no manned flights for 6-8 years. Then, they'd take the tools they learned and do a few trips to the moon. Then, again, no manned flights for 6-8 years and then try for Mars. I asked him if they thought they could keep public interest in the space program alive for that period of time and he agreed that was a good question.
They're planning another shuttle flight for May or June of this year. |