With the fiscal year 2011 budget proposal and a recent speech in Florida, President Barack Obama has provided NASA with all the assets and vision needed to make a critical shift in our human spaceflight program. We are working with Congress to make this vision a reality.

The goal is to develop a long-range plan to get beyond low-Earth orbit and eventually to Mars. If we flounder, it is unlikely we will have a similar opportunity in our lifetimes. America will lose its leadership in technological innovation and human spaceflight.

How did we get here? Six years ago, all of us were excited when President George W. Bush committed NASA to traveling again beyond low-Earth orbit. Unfortunately, the necessary funding increases never came. On its current path, Constellation would not get astronauts back to the International Space Station on U.S. rockets until two years after the station’s scheduled retirement in 2015. And Constellation won’t get us beyond low-Earth orbit in any reasonable time or enable us to land on the moon again. Sticking with Constellation also would continue to put at risk funding for other critical national priorities, such as science, aeronautics, technology development and education.

Before I ever was approached about becoming the NASA administrator, it was obvious to me we had serious problems in balancing our priorities. It was equally obvious it would take courageous action on the part of the president and NASA leadership to realize our dream of sending people beyond low-Earth orbit.

To make this dream a reality, we must identify quicker and less costly ways to develop new launch systems. We must speed the acquisition process so it doesn’t take a decade to make a new system operational. And we must work diligently with the commercial sector to help them succeed at providing safe, reliable, redundant access to low-Earth orbit while NASA develops futuristic capabilities to reach deep space. These changes will not be easy, but they are by no means impossible.

We remain firmly committed to ensuring the safety of any NASA astronaut who travels to space. We have launched people and payloads for more than 50 years and have myriad lessons paid for with the blood and sweat of astronauts, engineers and others who built this industry. NASA will continue to ensure that any U.S. rocket carrying people will be safe, tested and certified. We at NASA will be the commercial launch industry’s partners in achieving these shared goals.

We must look to the possibilities before us as we begin our 21st-century march beyond our home planet. I ask for everyone’s cooperation as we carry out President Obama’s new plan. America’s future in space depends on it.

Bolden is the administrator of NASA.

Source: chron.com