TUCSON, ARIZONA -- America's space program is going no place fast. As shuttle astronauts fiddle with pieces of a megabillion-dollar International Space Station built for six, exactly where the U.S. space enterprise is taking the ground-bound, tax-paying public-at-large remains unknown.

Disgruntled space activists met here from May 25-29 at the 19th annual International Space Development Conference.

They contend no shortage exists of sky-high projects worth doing: from taking personal treks into Earth orbit to building lunar cities and planting settlements on Mars. But such visionary quests appear to be, quite literally, lost in space.

"We either are going to open up orbital flight to people or not. That decision could be influenced a significant amount by steps we take in defining thenext generation shuttle."
     

Aldrin said he is concerned that current NASA studies in next-generation launch vehicles fail to adequately address the high volume markets that offer the greatest potential to drive down space-access costs. One such market is space tourism, he said.

"Taking people into space may be a nuisance to a bureaucracy that is running the astronaut office and the present shuttle system. It just doesn't fit in," Aldrin said. But John Glenn's return to orbit aboard a space shuttle, he said, stirred up a public sentiment that "if he can do it, why can't I do it?"

"We either are going to open up orbital flight to people or not. That decision could be influenced a significant amount by steps we take in defining the next generation shuttle," Aldrin said.

A view of Mars

Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona) decried the bureaucracies that exist both in the space program, as well as in the U.S. Congress. Recent attempts to slash NASA's space-science budget have put America's future as a spacefaring nation "at mortal risk," he said.

"We don't have the kind of budgets for NASA that we would like. We don't have the kind of fervor and passion that existed in the 1960s," Kolbe said. NASA is searching for a mission that would grab the public attention, he said.

"Somehow, we have to find that mission," Kolbe said. "We've got some real opportunities, but we've got some real challenges that are ahead of us."

Seeing red is Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society, based near Denver, Colorado.

Not only is the planet Mars an ideal spot for a new branch of civilization, Zubrin said, a human mission to that neighboring world speaks to what the human venture in space is about. The issue at hand is getting the space program to go the distance, he said.

"The American people by and large do want there to be a next step. They do want a space program that goes somewhere. In fact that's the only reason why they tolerate the space program because they expect the space program, eventually, to go somewhere. They are kind of waiting for that to happen," Zubrin said.

"As long as we are spending $14 billion a year on NASA we ought to have a space program that goes somewhere," Zubrin said. "Right now there is a crystal sphere walling us in, below low Earth orbit. And we have to break it," he said.

Now undergoing a commercialized makeover is the Russian Mir space station. Operating since 1986, the orbiting outpost recently got an infusion of private monies to keep it afloat. A lease arrangement between the Amsterdam-based MirCorp and the station's Russian operator, RKK Energia, is transforming the aging complex into the first private building in space.

Inside Mir's core

Rick Tumlinson, president of the Space Frontier Foundation, headquartered in Los Angles, California, said that NASA has put out the unwelcome mat for MirCorp, attempting to torpedo the privately funded renovation project. He is also an advisor to MirCorp, working on the early phases of commercializing the Russian station.

Characterizing NASA as a "socialist institution," Tumlinson said that the newly established MirCorp is a product of free-enterprise Americans working with free-enterprise Russians.

"It's unfortunate that NASA is still trying to kill the project. NASA is still behind and in front of the scenes offering money to bring the station down. This is pure, free enterprise, and it's our own government and our own space agency trying to stop us. That makes me very sad," Tumlinson told SPACE.com.

"NASA has sterilized space. They've taken this exciting frontier and have turned it into a bureaucratic playground. And no wonder that it's turned people off," Tumlinson said.

"Most of what NASA talks about now is safety, safety, safety, safety. Well I'm sorry, it's a frontier and frontiers are about risk and taking chances," he said.

Demanding that the U.S. Congress and NASA make a little down-payment on the future is at the heart of a new proposal and public campaign proposed at the conference by the National Space Society of Washington, D.C.

"We are proposing a very modest 1 percent for the future program. We need to get away from the ambiguity that we've seen in the last year to do some technology work towards what humans might do in the future in space," said Pat Dasch, Executive Director of the National Space Society.

"The public is disinterested in space. What we're calling for is roughly $140 million a year to start developing the technologies and plans to enable the human exploration of the moon and Mars. For the public, humans in space captures their imagination," she said.

Dasch said that the International Space Station, a long-term work-in-progress, has become stale.

The International Space Station at sunrise

"It has grown old as its technology has grown old. The public sees NASA bogged down in this enormous project. They see NASA weighed down with the project, with morale also dragged down by it. They see an agency struggling even now to get it done," Dasch said.

Given a small wedge of money and mandate, NASA must begin to plan for the future and the human settlement of space -- on the moon, Mars, asteroids, within space habitats and, eventually, the stars, Dasch said.

"We want action. This is what we want and we want it now," Dasch said.