Long space-flight gap worries NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Sometime in 2010, the world's leading space-exploring nation will say goodbye to manned space flight for more than four years.

And that has U.S. policymakers worried.

The flight gap will occur because NASA is winding down its space shuttle program near the end of 2010 to move into the next phase of space exploration — the moon and Mars. The next-generation spacecraft, the Orion capsule, won't be ready for manned flight until March 2015.

During those gap years, the United States must rely on the good will of other nations if it wants to send astronauts and cargo to the international space station.

"Who knows what the geopolitics is going to be like in 2015?" asks U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Space, Aeronautics and Related Sciences subcommittee. "Is Russia still going to be allied with us? Would they possibly be allied with China at that point?"

The space agency has been in this position before. There was a six-year gap between the last Apollo flight in 1975 and the first shuttle flight in 1981.

In the meantime, NASA will have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Russia for a lift to the space station, although private companies also may be hired for trips to low-Earth orbit.

"It is not a very desirable situation," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "We will have an orbiting destination that we have spent multiple billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to develop. To not be able to get there except for the good will of others is a little ironic."

NASA fears the United States will risk losing its title as the leading spacefaring nation as Russia, Europe, Japan, China and India improve their ability to send humans and cargo into space during the gap years. Currently, the only three nations with vehicles able to fly people to space are China, Russia and the United States.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin recently told lawmakers that China's ambitious space program could feasibly beat the United States in the race back to the moon, although he and outside experts say there's no indication yet that China is on that path.

The gap also could contribute to a loss of interest in space exploration by the U.S. public and Congress, and that could diminish the resources allotted to the space agency, said W. Henry Lambright, a political science professor at Syracuse University.