What NASA sees ahead

This graphic shows what NASA calls an "integrated snapshot of Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, ATV, HTV, COTS (RpK and SpaceX), Ares 1, and Orion flights between 2007 and 2015." NASA is, of course, keeping its fingers crossed that this revised and stretched-out program is going to be funded, or if more cuts will push the Ares and Orion additional years "to the right," as they say in the Federal government. NASA Adminsitrator Mike Griffin recently lamented that NASA does not have the presumption of continuance we accord to other Federal agencies. "We don't debate if we will have a Navy," he said. "But every year we always seem to debate if we will have a space program."