Would I send someone to Mars or Moon? Yes. But beeing realistic, society doesn't.
Continuing to spend $3 billion a year on the ISS after 2020 would be a huge waist of NASA dollars! Continuing to conduct a variety of microgravity experiments at one centralized facility where human occupants (even space tourist) are constantly moving around in other areas of the space facility, really makes no sense at all. Even Bolden said that last year. Microgravity research at LEO should be shifted away from NASA after 2020 to private industry. Its time for private companies like Bigelow to take commercial advantage of what we have learned from the space station by putting up private microgravity facilities. NASA needs to use those ISS funds to focus on a new generation of SLS hydrogen tank derived habitats that can accommodate internal centrifuges capable of generating temporary periods of high G to see if such devices can help to mitigate the deleterious effects of a microgravity environment on the human body. NASA also needs to develop SLS derived habitats joined together by cables and booms along a rotating axis to see if the human body can adjust to permanent artificial gravity conditions. Marcel F. Williams
Partial Cut - Sustaining Engineering contract really needs to be scrutinized. We could find substantial savings there. For every dollar from SE, you could redirect into different BLEO programs... even those that may not utilize SLS/Orion.Respectfully,Andrew GasserTEA Party in Space
Sorry that I'm so late to the game here.ISS is the largest piece of space infrastructure that we have; learning to operate, maintain, resupply it are first steps to permanent manned outposts beyond LEO. We need to learn by doing, not just creating PowerPoints, so that the next outpost will be better... and the next. There should never be a time in the future when mankind is not in space.
p.s. please don't take my strong opinion personally. It's true: I am really "upset" with the ISS because I think it is just another dead-end in the field and that several misconceptions about it has been built over time, but not with you or any other person expressing different opinions.