Law Professor Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on what direction the space debate should take us in his new Tech News Column. One of the courses he teaches is Space Law, so we give him extra credibility on the issue. He says,

the public debate should be on how to move ahead with an ambitious space program without committing ourselves to another big, bureaucratic program like the Space Shuttle, which never really took us where we wanted to go. Instead, we need to find ways to unleash the energies of the private sector, and to allow industries like space tourism to play a bigger role. It's capitalism that lowers costs, not government programs.....

A twenty-first century NASA should focus on new space launch technologies (including such "breakthrough" technologies as laser launch and scramjets), on interplanetary exploration (which won't have a commercial market for a while) and on other things that the private sector can't do. Those things that the private sector can do, like launching things to low-earth orbit, should be left to the private sector.....

I say that the debate will be over how to move ahead, rather than whether to move ahead, because I think that's how most Americans feel. As of Sunday afternoon, the email for my MSNBC site was running hundreds-to-one in favor of going on with an ambitious space program (and I mean literally "one" - I got only one email saying that we should just give up on space and stay home, and it was from a Canadian).

Count us in as one of the hundreds-to-one who want to see an ambitious space program.