Timothy Ferris explores the history of the space shuttle's shortcomings and NASA's safety failures, and discusses the future of manned spaceflight in this great article from 2004.
Writing shortly after the Columbia disaster, Ferris critiques the Bush administration's plan for a return to the moon, and argues that we must be able to make some money from our space endeavors if we're to accomplish more ambitious goals. But this almost certainly means that the private sector has to get involved in some way.
He also talks a little bit about building a space elevator, which would be awesome.
As we're facing yet another crossroads for human spaceflight, and deciding the fate of the Constellation program, this a good primer for that debate. And it would seem to lend some credibility to the President's proposal.
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