In my discussion with Steve Levy before the announcement, we discussed the need to minimize the chaos of a multi-vendor landscape by bringing partnerships, acquisitions and a mobile application platform into space.

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But with many laboratory tasks being automated, there should also be scope to begin new activities, and the partners believe one key role for the ISS going forward will be as a development platform for deep space exploration.

BBC: Manned flight around Moon considered

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.

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