Letter | NASA’s Asteroid Mission Helps Open Space Frontier

Mark V. Sykes rightly notes that “American Human Spaceflight is Floundering” [Commentary, Oct. 7, page 19]. But his prescription is to belittle the only option that might be afforded for humans to go anywhere in space in the next 10 years. He charges the administration with “changing gears” and says “objectives are not clear.” But going to an asteroid as a step into the solar system is a very clear objective, and the only gear change was moving the potential accomplishment forward in the absence of funding for a deep-space capability that could support astronauts on months-long interplanetary voyages.