New Class of Astronauts

I was on twitter the other day (I subscribe to various NASA updates) and I found out that Nasa announced a 2009 class of astronauts. An MSNBC article mentions that this new class will never fly on the space shuttle. Right now NASA has plenty of astronauts, and too few missions remaining. The reason I decided to mention this, is because the Space Shuttle program (Discovery, Atlantis, & Endeavour) will be retired in 2010. After the shuttle NASA will be paying the Russians $51 million for a ride on the Soyuz space craft to reach the ISS. Right now there is an ever expanding gap before NASA can send astronauts back into space. The Ares program has been called into question, and Mr. Obama has ordered commission to review the Ares program and the Orion Capsule that make up Constellation which will send astronauts to the ISS, the Moon and then to Mars.

With all that said, there will not be any space flights by NASA for a while. Now that these individuals have been accepted, it will take two years of training for them to become a full fledged astronaut. That is alot of money that NASA will invest in these people who may or may not make into space. As somebody typing on a keyboard, logic tells me, that it would be much wiser to use that money on the Constellation Program.