With space travel being handed over to private companies, what’s next for NASA? The government space and science agency needs to remain relevant. They know this. The government knows this, too.

Could the need to remain relevant be the reason for the possibly hasty (and heavily criticized) paper on arsenic-based life? I am thinking so. But I digress…

Dr. Michio Kaku wrote an article about the future of NASA. Here’s a bit from that article:

NASA needs to have a concrete goal in space. Earlier this year in February, the President released the FY 2011 Budget request proposing several exciting new programs that seek to foster a sustainable human space exploration enterprise. Some of this includes several Exploration Study Teams specializing in a variety of objectives including: Flagship Technology Demonstrations, Commercial Crew & Cargo, Enabling Technology Development & Demonstration, Exploration Precursor Robotic Missions, Human Research and Heavy Life/Propulsion Technologies. Click here to review the FY 2011 Budget Overview; This will give you a more detailed vision of some of NASA’s plans for the next few years.

There are several possibilities. One is to land on an asteroid, or maybe a comet. Another is to go to the Lagrange points surrounding the Earth-moon system (where gravity balances out). Another is to land on the moons of Mars (since you would not need a lot of rocket fuel for a return mission from Mars itself). Another is to send our astronauts on a one-way ticket to Mars (so they would eventually die on the red planet). Perhaps a more practical goal would be to send astronauts on a one-way ticket to Mars and then have them create their own rocket fuel for the return mission, from oxygen and hydrogen from ice. That would give them an incentive to successfully electrolyze water into rocket fuel!