Shuttle retirement leaves 'yawning gap' in human spaceflight

US space policy is in disarray as the final space shuttle flight approaches, say space scientistsNasa's fond farewell to the aged shuttle fleet draws a permanent line under 30 years of missions that defined modern space flight, but the US space agency cannot afford to dwell on its past achievements.The closure of the shuttle programme has left Nasa facing a deeply uncertain future, with no means to fly astronauts into space, and no clear role in the ongoing human exploration of the solar system.What's for certain is that the agency will transform over the next decade. The Obama administration has instructed Nasa to hand over to private companies the bread-and-butter job of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. That will free Nasa to focus on tougher and more ambitious goals, ultimately to take crews beyond the realm of low Earth orbit. So the thinking goes.The transition will...

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