On February 20, 1962, JohnGlenn's spaceflight helped kick start the pioneering, glory days of America'sjourneys to and from Earth orbit. Though his mission lasted a little under fivehours, circling Earth for just three orbits - "You didn't ride in the Mercurycapsule," Glenn said of the tiny Friendship 7, " you wore it"-- he parachuted into the history books forever.

But at the dawn of the 21^stcentury, with hundreds of people having now circled our planet, just whattrajectory is human spaceflight really taking? Apollo, for all its glory andfoot stomping moonwalks, is today a dusty, historical artifact of the Cold War.

As the International SpaceStation faces size and budget reductions and as human missions back to the moonor on to Mars are put on the backburner or dismissed, human spaceflight appearsto have been placed into a neutral parking orbit.

Discretionary option

The omnipresent harshreality of NASA's funding plays a significant role in this problem. The spaceprogram is not the result of mandatory spending. Rather it is the product of"discretionary" expenditure by the U.S. government. Allocatingtaxpayer cash for space is an optional decision. Be that as it may, the spaceagency's proposed fiscal year 2003 budget totals $15.1 billion. A good chunk ofthat currency is gobbled up by human space flight, be it flying the spaceshuttle or running the International Space Station program.

Still, rumor has it thatbelt tightening at NASA in the near future is likely to include astronautlayoffs.

An aging NASA is oneconcern of veteran shuttle astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, associate director foruniversity research and affairs at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,Texas.

"We're now not onlyworried about losing corporate knowledge from the Apollo era, but also from thespace shuttle era workforce," Dunbar said at a recent international forumon space. "We need to pay attention to the 21^st century. It's adeveloping, internationally competitive market out there," she said,noting that human spaceflight is an emerging market of the future.

Man-in-the-can

We've come a long way sincethe "man-in-the-can" flight of Glenn, said Bruce McCandless II, aformer astronaut, and now chief scientist for reusable space transportationsystems at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado.

"What's changed overthe past 40 years is that we're no longer trying to prove some select membersof the human species can survive the largely unknown rigors ofspaceflight," McCandless said. "We now have an operational spaceshuttle system in which the average person on the street walking around underhis or her own power could productively participate in a space mission,"he told SPACE.com.

On the other hand, thefuture isn't what it used to be, McCandless pointed out. Missing in action arethe post-Apollo aspirations of extended stays on the Moon and bold expeditionsto Mars. "I thought, and many others thought, that surely by the turn ofthe century we'd have people on Mars and probably some sort of semi-permanentresearch station on the Moon," he added.

"So in that respect,we have not progressed as far as many of us had hoped," McCandless said.

Don't count on goinganywhere any time soon, except around in circles courtesy of the InternationalSpace Station, suggested Richard Berendzen, an astronomer at AmericanUniversity in Washington, D.C. "Human spaceflight had a weak rationalebefore September 11. Now, given the other national needs -- like increasedsecurity, a recession, and budget deficits -- the rationale has all butvanished. The Cold War got it started, but the current terrorists war won'tsustain it," he suggested.

Nonetheless, Berendzencontinued, he fervently hopes the nation, despite its other needs, won'tforsake exploration and space science, and the impact those endeavors have onpublic spirit and education. "But at this stage, those worthy and notablegoals can best be achieved through robotic missions and telescopicobservations," he said.

Time for commercialinterruption

The pressure on NASA tolive within its means is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Newthinking is needed about how to fund human exploration. That's the view ofDonna Shirley, former Mars exploration director at the Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, California. She is now assistant dean of engineering atthe University of Oklahoma.

"Human habitation ofthe space station, while an important step for learning about how humans functionin space, is hardly exploration," Shirley said. "I believe thatfuture human exploration of the Moon and Mars will have to depend to a largeextent on commercial market forces," she said.

Commercial drivers forhuman exploration of the solar system also mean that NASA, and the rest of theFederal Government, "need to look very hard at policies which retard thedevelopment of a real commercial space industry," Shirley said. Oneproblem that contributes to the woes of private space launch firms, she said,is competition from government-funded launch vehicles.

One emerging payload in thefuture human spaceflight arena is people. While returning astronauts to theMoon and flying individuals to Mars has been a mainstay of America's futurespace agenda, public space travel will likely become a new and boomingcommercial space business.

Public space travelers

The timing and eventualscale of space tourism remains unclear, said Derek Webber, program manger atFutron Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland. He is leading a NASA-funded studytagged Analysis of Space Concepts Enabled by New Transportation, or ASCENT forshort.

A personal view of Webberis that, before John Glenn is 90, ten years from now at the 50^thanniversary of his Mercury capsule flight, two distinct kinds of space tourismwill be happening.

First, the very rich willbe following in the space boots of Glenn himself, as well as millionairepay-per-view space travelers, Dennis Tito and soon-to-fly Mark Shuttleworth. Anew kind of spaceflight will emerge too. Sub-orbital flights can provideonce-in-a-lifetime experiences for public space travelers, Webber said.

"Instead of cheeringencouragement from the sands of Cocoa Beach, Florida, as they did whenFriendship 7 had its flight, the American public will soon get their chance toshare the experience of spaceflight. Simultaneously, they'll create newbusiness opportunities that will in themselves help to sustain the whole launchvehicle business for the foreseeable future," Webber concluded.

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