With the future of human space flight hanging in the balance after the Obama administration's decision to scrap the Constellation program, it seems like the perfect time to look at where we've been and where we will boldly go.

Word had leaked out that there was a Plan B in the works and now the White House has announced that it is putting together a conference on April 15th  to discuss a new way forward.

Part of the debate over NASA's future revolves around the budget. In 2009, the Obama Administration spent $19.17 billion dollars on NASA according to data from the Congressional Budget Office. The data show that the Gross Domestic Product for 2009 was over $14.25 trillion dollars with annual spending on NASA weighing in at 0.134% of GDP and about 0.544% of the federal budget. 

To put the recent budget numbers and and possible future proposals in perspective let's take a look at government spending on NASA during the space race. Using data from the CBO, this visualization shows how funding has changed for NASA under 10 presidents.

Posterous does not support javascript and it cannot handle this visualization, but you can try it out on the Tumblr version of this story: http://anthonycalabrese.tumblr.com/post/476469711/space-race-navigator-where-...

Space Race Spending Navigator made using Tableau Public...

Some notes on the viz: The dollar amounts shown here are not adjusted for inflation and GDP data was not available for 1964 from this data source. Photos of the Moon landing and the first manned Space Shuttle flight are public domain (NASA) via Wikimedia Commons.

A few of these new technologies may prove to be game changers:

• Space Solar Power
• The Space Elevator
• Orbital Refueling Stations
• Ion Propulsion Systems
• Solar Sails

We’ll see what happens on April 15th, but for now check out this sci-fi depiction of an attack on the space elevator.