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The New NASA Plan For Human Space Exploration



June 15, 2011
Last year, the U.S. Congress passed a law specifying that NASA must build a new heavy-lift rocket out of parts designed for the 30-year-old Space Shuttle and the cancelled Ares rocket. Why? So industries in their districts can manufacture the same old parts and fit them together.

As NASA tries to build a powerful new deep-space rocket capable of launching explorers to other worlds, it is forced to make technical decisions driven by politics, not sound engineering.

Congress has handed the reins of our space program to a few members fighting to keep contracts in their districts. It's time for Planetary Society members to tell the U.S. Congress and President Obama to let NASA do its job before any more innovations in science, technology or space exploration are lost!

Sign our urgent petition to restore our future in space >>


Times were hard in the U.S. space program in the late 1970s: the spectacular Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flights were already in the past, and the future seemed uncertain. The shuttle had not yet taken flight, but its soaring costs were all but choking off the robotic exploration program that had begun so promisingly. It was in these circumstances that Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman joined together to form The Planetary Society. Their goal: to bring together the millions of space enthusiasts around the world, and turn them into a powerful political force advocating space exploration.

The Planetary Society has done many, many different things since those early days. But space advocacy has remained at the core of the Society's mission, and its impact was felt right from the start. Already in 1981, when Congressional funding for NASA's SETI program was threatened with cancellation, the Society stepped in and helped ensure SETI funding for the next eleven years.

The Society repeatedly called upon its members and friends to support a mission to Pluto, the only planet in our Solar System not visited by man-made spacecraft. Funding for the mission was cut time after time in consecutive budget cycle, only to be restored after vigorous letter writing and advocacy campaigns by The Planetary Society. New Horizons finally lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on its way to Pluto on January 19, 2006. Throughout the decades, the Society has brought public opinion to bear in favor of human missions extending father into the solar system and eventually to Mars.

Relying on its unique expertise and extensive connections, the Society is able to present comprehensive proposals to policy makers, and inject fresh ideas into policy discussions. Through grassroots actions, groundbreaking studies, expert workshops, and direct communication with policy makers, The Planetary Society helps shape the future of human and robotic space exploration.

Space advocacy has been at the core of the Society's mission from the start, and continues to be so today. Together, The Planetary Society, its members, and its supporters, can help shape the space policies of tomorrow.