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Representatives from NASA encouraged Europe to work on the development of its own manned spaceship. In such a way Europe will be able to provide the world, and mainly the United States, an additional way of get to the international space station.

The administrator of NASA stated that today Europe turned into "a full-fledged space power". The statement was made after the flight controllers at a European Space Agency center managed to conduct an unmanned cargo ship towards the ISS in April of 2008. It is worth mentioning that the unmanned cargo ship delivered food, water and clothes.

"It would be a small step to develop that technology into an independent European human spaceflight capability. We welcome the development of independent European capabilities in space to provide redundant systems in the event of failure of any one partner's capabilities," outlined NASA Administrator Michael Griffin at the meeting of European scientists and space executives, which was held in the French parliament.

After space shuttle will end its flying career, which will be in 2010, the ISS will highly rely on the European unmanned spaceships. The Orion capsule, a spacecraft of the next generation developed by NASA, will be prepared for its first mission in 2015. Until then the United States will have to pay Russia hundreds of millions of dollars in order to get to the space station.

"Having more capability to get to orbit and having the second capability by an ally rather than the tense relationship with China or Russia would be a positive thing," mentioned John Logsdon, director of space policy at George Washington University.

<!--[endif]-->Philippe Berterottiere, who holds the position of marketing director for Arianespace, stated that it would be "quite easy" to create a manned spaceship, which will require around $3-4.5 billion. At the same time John Logsdon outlined that it is less likely that Europeans would be able in a 5-year period to develop a manned capsule and launch it into space "in time to be much of a help" without American ship.

Mr. Griffin expressed his concerns regarding the forthcoming gap without U.S. shuttle. He encouraged Europe to team up with the United States in its mission on Mars. French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on the fact that Europe should work on this project together with the U.S.

"Exploring the Moon, and eventually Mars, will be a challenging task, one that NASA has neither the resources nor the desire to do alone. I am personally committed to the idea that this enterprise should be international in scope," stated Griffin.

In his note addressed to the space conference, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, wrote that France will take advantage of its presidency of the European Union, which will starting in July, to make specific steps in developing the European space project. However, he did not specify any details. According to Yannick d'Escatha, head of CNES, a French space agency, the joint European budgets dedicated for space total around $9.24 billion a year. Just for the information it is worth mentioning that NASA's annual space budget accounts for about $17 billion.