Reestablish America's ability to build and maintain big structures in earth orbit?

America is not building a second-generation space shuttle but is instead building three space capsules: the Orion and two others, from Boeing and SpaceX. All will land by parachute, like spacecraft of the 1960s, and none will allow space walks comparable to the space shuttle. Unlike Hubble, the next big telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (due for launch October 2018) will have to be right the first time. There will be no way to repair it. It is already more costly than originally planned, and there is no shuttle to take astronauts to save it if something goes wrong.

The U.S. Air Force's Boeing X-37B, which began as a NASA craft but was transferred to the Pentagon in 2004, is an unmanned space plane that looks like a small space shuttle. Like the shuttle, it returns to Earth and lands on a runway. It has been flying successfully for five years. A scaled-up version with an astronaut crew to work outside the vehicle could reestablish America's ability to build and maintain big structures in Earth orbit.

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