Human Spaceflight
Under the Bush administration, the
Constellation program
included plans for retiring the Space Shuttle program and replacing it with the capability for spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. In the
2011 United States federal budget
, the Obama administration canceled Constellation for being over budget and behind schedule while not innovating and investing in critical new technologies.
[17]
As part of the
Artemis program
, NASA is developing the
Orion
spacecraft to be launched by the
Space Launch System
. Under the
Commercial Crew Development
plan, NASA relies on transportation services provided by the private sector to reach low Earth orbit, such as
SpaceX Dragon 2
, the
Boeing Starliner
or
Sierra Nevada Corporation
's
Dream Chaser
. The period between the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first launch into space of
SpaceShipTwo
Flight VP-03
on 13 December 2018 is similar to the gap between the end of
Apollo
in 1975 and the
first Space Shuttle flight
in 1981, and is referred to by a presidential Blue Ribbon Committee as the U.S. human spaceflight gap.