"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." -- Seneca

Anyone who studies the history of NASA realizes that the road to the future is not without its detours.

For every success like the Saturn V, there was a Nova or a NERVA that never flew. There never would have been an International Space Station if Space Station Freedom hadn't not happened first. You can't have the success of the realization of brilliant ideas if you're not willing to risk exploring ideas that end up not panning out.

One of those detours began seven years ago this week, on January 14, 2004. With the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia a year earlier still fresh on everyone's mind, President George W. Bush announced a bold new Vision For Space Exploration, centering around retiring the space shuttle fleet after the completion of the International Space Station, and moving forward with a new space exploration infrastructure that would return humans to the moon as a foundation for missions to Mars and beyond. After more than 30 years in low Earth orbit, NASA would be venturing farther from our home planet again.

Over the following years, the Vision began to take shape as the Constellation program -- notional ideas were developed for what the infrastructure would look like; then those ideas turned into plans for specific vehicles, like the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew capsule and the Altair lunar lander; and plans for vehicles began turning into hardware. A test version of the Ares I was flown, the new J2-X engine was tested on the ground, and a new launch tower was built for the future rockets.

As time passed, money was spent and changes took place in the nation's political leadership, Constellation went the way of other ideas like the National Aerospace Plane and Blue Gemini as a new approach to exploration was announced. The Ares I and Ares V rockets were cancelled in favor of a new infrastructure that would rely much more heavily on cooperation between government and commercial partners in building the future of space exploration.

But just as the International Space Station built on the foundational work done for Space Station Freedom, elements of Constellation live on after it. Development continues on the J2-X engine, for example, and visitors to the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center can get up-close with another of those elements -- the Orion crew capsule, currently undergoing testing for a planned role in missions into deep space. On display in the Davidson Center is an early concept model for what would become Orion, capturing a snapshot from the development of the vehicle.

Changes may yet still occur in what the exact vehicles will look like that will carry Americans on future missions of exploration, but as NASA continues to work toward missions beyond low Earth orbit, perhaps the most important legacy of that Vision of seven years ago was the heart of its spirit -- "We do not know where this journey will end," President Bush said in his announcement, "yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos."

Contributing Author: David Hitt