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Prompted by a tight federal budget President Barack Obama proposed retiring NASA’s space fleet.  But this week, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison introduced a bill to extend NASA operations to 2013.

We’re taking a look at the future of American spaceflight with perspectives from Russia Today, The Houston Chronicle, MSNBC, WESH TV and The Daily Cougar.

President Obama wants to stop building new rockets to send astronauts back to the Moon.  But he also wants to commercialize spaceflight by outsourcing missions to private companies.

On Russia Today’s “CrossTalk,” a representative from the Space Frontier Foundation says the time to privatize is now.

“The private sector is starting to prove it can achieve a capability to start commercializing the space orbit, allowing NASA then to use its resources to go forward and actually explore new worlds like the Moon, go onto Mars, explore the asteroid belt, and start actually making the frontier open for the rest of us.”

Others are worried about the economic threat of suspending NASA’s operations.

Orlando’s NBC affiliate --WESH-TV-- says 7,000 NASA contractors in Florida would lose their jobs, causing a ripple effect through local economies.

"For every space coast worker that you lose at the Kennedy Space Center, you're going to lose between three and four other people that are going to lose their jobs in Titusville and in Volusia and Brevard counties.  Those at the rally predict a very bleak future for this space coast's economy, where the current unemployment rate is already 12 percent."

But in a column from The Daily Cougar, a University of Houston student says the NASA cuts would be painful but necessary.

“It is a shame that the nation is being set back in the advancement of space exploration…But with the economy suffering the way it has been, certain sacrifices need to be made for the good of the nation.  They may unfortunately affect a great deal of people, but not doing anything would make us all sacrifice much more in the end.”

So what do you think?  Does space exploration belong in the hands of NASA or private companies?

Writer: Courtney Cebula

Producer: