I should start this post by fully disclaiming that I don’t think I have any significant or impressive credentials to be making the following assertions. They are merely my opinions and thoughts, accumulated in a storage space in my mind over the last few months, as speculations of the current administration’s plans for NASA have reached a fever pitch, with rumors and supposedly confirmed facts rampant in the media.

From a young age, I buried my nose in astronomy books in my spare time. I, in fact, love to tell the story of my first direct contact with NASA – a fateful visit to Space Center Houston at the tender age of eight. I walked away, declaring I’d one day work in Mission Control and be an astronaut. I half realized that dream just under a month ago, when I sat in the Space Station Flight Control Room for the first time and spoke to the crew on the International Space Station, whom I helped train. I left the building that night, with my footsteps echoing across the empty parking lot, knowing that I had the amazing opportunity to contribute to a legacy left by the pioneers of yesteryear, ever single day.

Thus, I speak as a very passionate space enthusiast, who’s known no reality but one with humans in space. I make the following points to acknowledge that frustrations are entirely plausible and understandable at this pivotal juncture in our nation’s space program. But, I also implore you, in spite of this, to consider the true implications of the changes that lay before of us. I ask that we embrace the opportunity for change, as we approach a unique moment in our agency’s history, one that we have not seen since its inception, yet one that gives us the freedom to actually define our future.

Over the last few days, even hours, I’ve heard countless, generally depressing thoughts about the future of our nation’s space program, based largely on supposedly confirmed reports from various media outlets. The most flagrant of these speculations, and perhaps the one that will eventually be revealed to be fact, is the cancellation of the Constellation program, inevitably delaying the return of humans to the moon.

Specific implications of these actions are not within my realm of knowledge or expertise. However, in my very naïve viewpoint, I believe we are now at a critical impasse, where we have the opportunity to set the course for the future of human space exploration. Never before have we been faced with such apathy, lack of support and funding; and yet, this same moment, though it may seem a burden, presents us with a challenge. How can we prove to the administration, Congress, the American public, our international partners, the world…that we are truly capable of pioneering the future of human spaceflight?

Critics of the Ares program have voiced their opinions since the groundwork was laid for the Constellation program, and yet now that there’s a possibility for its cancellation, outcries of the absurdity of this happening are widespread. Yes, we lose our immediate and near-term capability for sending humans beyond LEO. But this presents us with an opportunity, an opportunity to take the lessons learned from the Ares program, from the ISS program, from the Shuttle Program, from our very history, to go back to the drawing board.

In our changing world, it’s time that we realize that ignoring the commercial spaceflight sector will not benefit our agency in the slightest. On the contrary, by accepting their role in human space exploration and working to define their roles and develop requirements, we capitalize on the ability to contribute to the future of human space exploration. We give ourselves the chance to innovate in a way that has never been tried before. In essence, it gives NASA the perfect opportunity to define its next step.

Yes, this does now mean that we aren’t landing on the moon by 2018…I think it’s time to accept this fact and just move on. The Shuttle Program was done for, as soon as the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. We, as an agency, saw this coming. Perhaps we could’ve prepared for it a little more practically; hindsight is always 20/20. But now that we are at this pivotal juncture, it’s time to view the impending change as an opportunity to prove what we are capable of as an agency. It’s a chance for us to truly innovate and develop a plan for getting humans beyond LEO. It’s an opportunity for NASA to work with both the commercial sector and the international community, as partners for getting humans to the moon and onto Mars. Though the timeline is significantly delayed than previously thought, this is one of the most crucial moments in our agency’s history where we actually get to contribute in defining its direction.

So, think about why you became a part of the space program in the first place. Think about what interests you and makes you so passionate about human space exploration. If you’re like me, it’s a “je ne said quoi” quality that embedded itself in your soul at an early age and never left. It’s the yearning to explore and see new horizons. It drives you every day and excites your very being at the thought of your contributions, however minute or significant, helping humans fulfill one of our innate desires: to explore. How can we be upset over the new adventures that lay ahead? Why look back and criticize past decisions, when there is little we can do about them? Why not look forward to the future and use our position to drive our agency in the direction we’d all like to see it go: help humans get beyond LEO. There’s no single solution to getting this done. We have all the resources in the world at our disposal, literally, to accomplish what we did in the 1960s. Let’s prove our naysayers incorrect; let’s collaborate with our commercial and international partners; let’s expand the realm of possibilities and forge ahead with ambition, passion, and determination to accomplish what we all truly believe in, in our hearts. As someone once said, “We would not be honoring the legacy of those who came before us, if we didn’t believe our greatest accomplishments lay ahead of us.”