NASA's MESSENGER Space Probe Arrives at Mercury

In August, 2004, a small robotic spacecraft hurtled skywards to begin a 4.9 billion mile trek to the planet Mercury. Today, 6 years later, that spacecraft arrives and officially becomes the first artificial satellite of Mercury in history.

MESSENGER arrives at Mercury (Artists Depiction)

Here to warp speed – how will we get there?

Currently, on Earth, there are three space-faring nations. Those are The USA, Russia, and China. That means that if a human being wants to go into space they will have to go to one of those nations. Other countries may have satellite launch capabilities, but there is a huge gulf between launching a satellite and launching people aboard an actual spaceship.

Russian Soyuz spaceship

As of next year, that number will shrink to two, as the USA will retire the shuttle fleet and have no replacement. That leaves the Russian Soyuz and the Chinese Shenzhou as humankinds only option for reaching space.

So what will the USA do? The answer is, we do not know. You see, the difficulty with building a new spaceship (for humans) is that it costs money and takes time. And the time it takes is longer than any single presidential term. That means that even if a President green-lights some amazing new spaceship, it could not be completed until probably two more presidents have been and gone.

Chinese Shenzhou spaceship

So you see the problem; each president is reluctant to throw money at NASA during his term because he will probably not see the benefits during his term. In fact, over the 30 or so years that the Shuttles have been running, there have been numerous plans for some, well, really cool spaceships.

Let’s have a look at some of those spacecraft that have been proposed, worked on, and then cancelled.