Human Space Flight Report Due Next Week

NASA and White House officials are said to be coalescing around the idea of sending astronauts on deep space missions to near-Earth objects and potentially the moons of Mars, reports Space News. White House sources are saying that sending astronauts on asteroid rendezvous and Mars flyby missions - called the the critical path exploration option by the presidential review panel - appears to be favored. The single most important element revolves around the federal outlay required for the federal space agency.

Sources both within the administration and close to it say an increase along the lines suggested by the Augustine panel is being weighed. Such an increase would add almost $1 billion to the space exploration budget in 2011, ramping up to about $3 billion annually by 2014.

If President Obama adopts the so-called "critcal path" as his own, an American human lunar landing in the next decade may be an option left open to a future presidential administration or an international civil effort or a commercial lunar endeavor. Ramping-up American human spaceflight is critical to innovation and the American economy. Perhaps President Obama realizes high-technology is the nation's economic innovation solution.