Astronaut office chief Steven Lindsey presents Astronaut opinions on the future of human spaceflight

Appearing at the Augustine Committee public meeting in Houston on 28th July 2009, Steven Lindsey comments and answers questions on the future of human space exploration.

Astronauts would like to see a doubling in the safety factor for ascent and descent to be incorporated into new spacecraft and launch vehicles. The Space Shuttle is a 1 in 77 vehicle (1 in 64 based on number of missions flown so far) which compares to the risk in climbing Mount Everest (1 in 62) and a D Day landing soldier (1 in 62), considering this Steven Lindsey did not consider NASA to be a risk adverse organization. However if there was to be another Shuttle failure and subsequent loss of crew, it would probably mark the end of the Space Shuttle program altogether.

Currently there are concerns about not only the up mass capability to ISS beyond Shuttle but also the down mass capability, despite support from the smaller cargo spacecraft Russian Progress, ESA's Automatic Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS).

In order to concentrate the NASA budget on missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), Steven Lindsey would like to see the COTS program takeover responsibility for LEO missions.

Not enough is known about manned planetary missions and long duration missions to ISS and Moon are considered essential steps for understanding and learning how to conduct a successful long duration mission to Mars.