What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?

Their goal today is to pay Russia to occupy the International Space Station which we built for them for the next ten years. They also intend to pay Russia to fly a few Americans to the ISS over the next few years. Other than that NASA will continue to spin dreams of what they wish they could do if they had the funding and political backing while waiting for the non-existent private sector space transportation industry to magically materialize out of nothing so they won't have to keep relying on the Russians to sell us rides to the ISS.



Oh yes. In his speech to the KSC last April (to an audience stacked with his hand-picked supporters) Obama spoke of how he "expected" to see the U.S. send a crew to an asteroid rendezvous and a mission to Mars within "his" lifetime. He provided absolutely no concrete plans for how he "expected" any of these lofty goals to come about. Perhaps he expects it to happen by magic the same way he expects the private sector space transportation industry to materialize.What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?To echo the only sensible answer given so far (by wilde_space), landing on an asteroid and going to Mars.



The way some people go on about the hugely expensive Constellation program, no-one would think that we've just crawled out of a worldwide ecconomic recession.



Anyway.... I think the following article gives a good account into the reasons why the Constellation program was cancelled;



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a鈥?/a>



And the following also makes interesting reading too;



http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/0鈥?/a>



The Constellation program represented doing things in the same old expensive and wasteful way, and look what happened to Apollo as a result, the wonderful achievement of landing on the moon followed by over 40 years without returning (who would have thought that at the time?).



So next time we go back to the moon, it should be by the most ecconomical and hence the most sustainable way possible, and that requires the private sector to be involved and international cooperation. Hence Obama has made the right choice.What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?
Quat's right. But as someone who has had his answers reported and deleted because they criticized the Kenyan-born usurper with Indonesian citizenship who pretends to be the current President of the United States, I want to advise Quat that Obama's supporters are not above using the Yahoo Answers reporting system as a means of censorship.



Obama is not a legal president. He isn't legal because he is not a citizen of the United States. He is not a citizen of the United States because he was neither born with citizenship nor was ever naturalized as a citizen. (For the purpose of being president, one must be born with citizenship; naturalization isn't good enough.)



Obama wasn't born with US citizenship because he was born in Kenya, which at the time was a British Protectorate. If Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, had been one year older when Obama was born, then Obama would have inherited US citizenship through her. But under US laws then existing, Ann Dunham was too young to pass citizenship to her son born abroad. Obama is not now, nor has he ever been, a citizen of the United States. Obama will never be a natural born US citizen, and he will never be constitutionally qualified to hold the office of US President.



Obama was elected to the presidency on the basis of lies, omissions, ambiguous statements, and a cover-up of his past records. There was a conspiracy to put him in office, and there remains a conspiracy to silence those who try to bring his citizenship status to the attention of the public.



NASA will do what it thinks best, I suppose, with the money it can get. NASA has been kicked around for a long time, watching its best ideas get some initial funding, and then have the funding yanked away before the work already done could bear fruit. Sometimes, I think that this is a deliberate policy by Congress, in order to undermine NASA's credibility as a viable, and less destructive, alternative to military spending as a way to develop higher technology.What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?designing a better engine and ship to get us to mars by 2020

instead of aiming for the moon in 2020, then waiting another 20 years to begin on a trip to mars.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/O鈥?/a>





also landing on asteroids.



I heard that the private sector is supposed to be working on ships, and flight service for astronauts and civilians. something about orbiting fueling stations too.What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?
To survive until a President who knows what he is doing restores its programs.What is NASA's main goal now that the Constellation Program is canceled?Landing on an asteroid and going to Mars.

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