Only 3 Shuttle launches left before retirement. What next?

There have been various articles in the past month surrounding the inevitable demise of the Space Shuttle by the end of this year. Endeavour has just made it to the ISS (doing a 'backflip' in the process), and the other 2 shuttles are likely to make their last journey in to space by summer's end. Since President Obama has declared no funding for a trip back to the Moon, reversing G.W. Bush's intent, I wonder if the Shuttle will continue a little longer. Ares is behind schedule a little, and I couldn't see the ongoing use of Soyuz/Proton continuing in favour of the U.S.

I wonder if there's an opportunity here for another space power like Japan, China or India to come on board with a launch vehicle? I am surprised, actually, to see that the known exploit of the shuttle's retirement has not been pounced upon by another space agency or country. It could be a lucrative business proposal, would you think?

Seanie.

I doubt we will see any more Shuttle lanuchs as alot of the infrastructure require for servicing and lanuching has been dismantled and is probably too costly to re-build.
Ares looked a bad idea from the beginning, mixing Saturn ideas with the Shuttle's SRBs and the Ares V having a similar design to the Delta IV rocket from Boeing.
The real oppurunity here is for the private sector to step in with lanuch services and this is where NASA should have been heading, NASA doing exploration and leaving lanuchs to the private sector.
Obama has given more funding to the private sector and I think we will SpaceX's Dragon vechicle or Orbital Sciene's Cygnus vechicle taking over the roll of the Shuttle for lanuch services and LEO transportation. Both vechicles has won the 2nd round of the COTS programme

Darragh

I make it four missions left, but yes, with the cancellation of Ares, the shuttle retirement will leave the US with no manned space programme and I'm slightly surprised we've not yet heard of a plan for the extension of the programme. That said, frankly the shuttles are old now - Discovery and Atlantis are 30 years old and spare parts are few and far between because many of those that they had were put into Endeavour when it was built to replace Challenger in the late '80s, so maybe there's nothing realistically that can be done safely to extend the programme.

My understanding, and Darragh alludes to it, is that Obama seems to be relying less on Government funding and more on Private funding. And that's no bad thing. I read in the last few days of NASA partnering up with privateers (and have been for some time) in the development of launch vehicles and associated systems.

My only worry for NASA is that there are strong possibilities that the Chinese will become the next "superpower" as regards manned missions. Whether that means they will land and remain on the moon is debatable. But they have the capability...

Perhaps NASA should anyhow concetrate on the unmanned science missions and let the private folks do the manned stuff (and no doubt do it cost-effectively).

My only worry for NASA is that there are strong possibilities that the Chinese will become the next "superpower" as regards manned missions.

...and this is not a bad thing in my opinion. Space is there for the taking. I often smirk to myself when I see sentences like that one above (not directed at you, Dave!) - it makes it sound bad that anyone but the Americans, followed by the Russians, have the gall to go into space, as if it's the responsibility of America to be on the Moon first - again!

Seanie.

I think the "worry" comes from the political regime in place in China and whether or not their space agency has the "whole world" view of things. Don't forget that it was the Chinese who blew the satellite to Kingdom Come last year and added 50% more space junk to Earth Orbit for the rest of humanity to navigate through. And the Russians have a few "loose cannon" satellites up there too.

I guess that's where my "worry" comes from. Hopefully it is totally unfounded and the Chinese really step up to the plate and use space exploration for the good of the rest of us.

I guess there is a strong element of at least being able to trust NASA and the USA to nurture space for humanity than than just "take it" for their own ends...