For the past two years, Russia has asked NASA to help with a manned space flight to Mars.
But to give up manned space flight entirely would be a mistake.
China this morning successfully launched its second manned space flight.
To the families of the astronauts, Bush said, "Our entire nation grieves with you, " and he made it clear that the United States would continue with manned space flight, despite the risks.
President Obama appointed the Augustine committee in May to gather information from space agency officials, scientists, the aerospace industry and from Congress about the best future course for US manned space flight.
And there is one other thing the sobering fact that, as an international status symbol, manned space flight can also sometimes be something of a liability, especially for a normally secretive country such as China.
President Obama declined to keep the shuttles going, canceled the planned replacement platform for manned space flight and thereby condemned this country for the foreseeable future to reliance on Russian and perhaps, in due course, Chinese rockets to deliver our astronauts to the space station.
"What we're asking (SpaceX officials) to do is amazing, " William Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's manned space-flight efforts, told reporters recently.
Despite the warm words of the nation's leaders, America's manned space-flight programme has been becalmed in Earth orbit for decades.
To date, China has so far launched four unmanned space missions to test the hardware for the manned flight.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | China manned space mission nears
He declined to say whether this would be the last manned flight to Mir, which has been in space orbit for 13 years.
But still, accepting that space flight is very risky, do you think that NASA has become maybe too risk averse for effective manned space exploration?
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