New vision for NASA - Obama plan resets human spaceflight button, Roger Lanius/Mike Green, Florida Today

"In the 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey," astronauts shuttled from the Earth to an orbiting space station aboard a commercial space plane and private firms carried out many other functions in low-Earth orbit, including the Hilton hotel on the station. Flash forward to 2018, and imagine NASA astronauts boarding a commercial space launcher delivering crews to the International Space Station. This may become reality for space exploration if Congress accepts the recently announced Obama administration's approach. This new direction proposes a major shift in the way NASA accomplishes human spaceflight."