many advances. Any multinational effort would be good, get the best minds the human race has to offer working on the project. Remember, the US put guys on the moon, but we needed Werner Von Braun, Kroft Erika and other German scientists to do it. Obama doesn't give a shout about going into space, he wants tax money to buy another term as Dictator of the United States. In any case, "we" will certainly go into space again, but not in a shuttle. American astronauts (and astronauts from many other countries) will continue to go up to the space station on the Russian Soyuz capsules. Later (in a generation or so), teams that will include American astronauts may venture back to the Moon or - more likely - to Mars. For that, they will definitely need a space vehicle that does not yet exist. The space shuttle cannot and never could go to the Moon - it was not designed for that. It was designed for heavy jobs in low Earth orbit, especially the construction of the space station and the ferrying of people and big instruments back and forth. The rest of the space program (exploration of the rest of the solar system by probes and the launching of better and better telescopes in orbit) is done by automatic rockets which are smaller and a LOT LESS expensive than the shuttle. The decision to stop the shuttle program was taken well before Obama became president. As hard as it