To replace the shuttle: A mission to Mars

Editor's note: Robert Zubrin is president of the Mars Society and the aerospace R&D firm Pioneer Astronautics, which does research and development for NASA and other agencies. An updated edition of his book, "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must" has just been published by Free Press.

America's human spaceflight program is now adrift. On July 8, the space shuttle is scheduled to make its final flight, and the Obama administration has no coherent plan for what to do next.

Instead, as matters stand, the United States will waste the next decade spending $100 billion to support an aimless constituency-driven human spaceflight effort that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing.

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