What is wrong with our space program, and steps to fix it.
Let me get this straight. We have a fleet of space shuttles that costs close to a billion bucks per flight, and uses uncontrollable and dangerous solid rocket boosters which have already destroyed one shuttle and killed its crew. It requires six months of painstaking repairs using an army of aeronautical engineers between each flight, and uses an external fuel tank that makes it 98% of the way to space, where it could be recycled and used in things like space stations, but instead is allowed to burn up in the atmosphere. The shuttle is reusable, but in name only. It eats up an ungodly amount of NASA's resources, and its capabilities are extremely limited.
We need something better.
The Earth's resources are limited. I'd personally wager that we have about forty years before overpopulation, man-induced climate changes, and resource depletion seriously impact our ability to live at our current high standard of living. The results will be wars, famine, and much miscellaneous destruction. Quite frankly, short of a biblical plague that wipes out 95% of the population, there is no way to stop this from happening. The Earth's biosphere can only handle the activities of so many people before it is exhausted. Who will ultimately pay the price when that happens? We will.
Our salvation lies in space, where there is all the resources we need to expand our civilization to as big as it needs to be. In our solar system, there is enough mineral wealth in the asteroids to make every person on this planet rich many times over. With the asteroids, we can build enough O'Neill style space habitats to give us thousands of times the surface area of Earth. What's even better is that the rest of the solar system is almost completely devoid of life, so we can strip-mine it without the guilt associated with trashing ecosystems or displacing native populations. All we need is an economical way to go up there.
Cheap access to space needs to be NASA's top priority. It needs to be a priority even over keeping the Shuttle flying and building the ISS. Right now, the cheapest way to get into space will set you back roughly a hundred dollars a pound. Nobody can afford it. These two avenues have the potential to cut that cost by orders of magnitude, and need to be pursued vigorously.
Avenue one is a new generation of rockets that are reusable and SSTO, Single Stage to Orbit. The idea is to have a vehicle that can go to space and back, then be turned over like a commercial airliner so it can make another flight in a matter of hours. The Space Shuttle was intended to be like that, but just didn't make it. It has too many disposable parts (like the boosters and external fuel tank,) it requires too much work in between flights, and it's just plain too expensive. The Delta Clipper, later renamed Graham Clipper, demonstrated true re-usability and rapid turnover, but it's design was passed over in favor of the X-33, which turned into a typical government project - cost overruns, broken promises, and ended in the inevitable cancellation. NASA needs to do much better.
The second avenue to pursue is the Space Elevator, nicknamed the Beanstalk. It's a fantastic sounding idea - run a cable from a satellite in high orbit all the way down to Earth's surface, so the cable and satellite's center of mass lies in geosynchronous orbit. The biggest problem was that no known material could withstand the enormous forces that would pull on such a cable. That problem may be a solvable one, thanks to a new material - carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes have incredible tensile strength - over a hundred times the strength of steel, and potentially strong enough to withstand the forces required of a space elevator. If a space elevator can be built, it would reduce the cost of transportation from Earth's surface to orbit from $100/lb to pennies per pound. The economics of space would be changed forever.
In any case, we need to get going soon. In fifty years, if we don't already have access to the near-limitless resources of space, we may no longer have the ability to get there if we decided we wanted to.