No human has set foot on the moon since December 19, 1972.
Thats more than 22 years ago. Since then mankind has only
been i orbit around the earth. We have only sent unmanned
probes to other worlds since then.

The landings on the moon happened during the heigth of the
cold war. When Soviet and USA could spend alot of money
on the projects. Will we again see a time when governments
are willing to spend alot of money to make a spacestation
on the moon or travel to mars?

The one hope I see is that if China get their space
program off the ground and make a big success, then USA
might start a new race with China to build a spacestation
on the moon or travel to mars.

What do you belive will happen in the future?

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It's a pity that America has no motivation unless there's an enemy...

If China goes Lunar, we'll go Martian. Of that I am certain. Everything else is in doubt.

Still, I have high hopes for the ISS. There is knowledge to be discovered and we're a curious race.

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> It's a pity that America has no motivation unless there's an enemy...
>
> If China goes Lunar, we'll go Martian. Of that I am certain. Everything else
> is in doubt.
>
> Still, I have high hopes for the ISS. There is knowledge to be
> discovered and we're a curious race.
>

Man is by nature curious, but we are also frayed and lazy. Our curiosity has currently pulled our focus in a thousand directions. Lazy should explain itself, but in this case we do very little without some external motivation.

Truthfully the space race was as much about developing ICBMs as actual exploration. The public spectacle, was just a way to show off without pushing the button. The leaders were smart enough to keep the message about the adventure and national pride. Today those forces are gone, I just hope a new competition can take its place. Be that China or the EU (2 places that seem primed to start it up again).

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Still looking for something profound or inspirational to place here.

Bah, utter nonsense.

The US is already planning on going to mars as a new initiative and more money is being spent in 2005 on space exploration than ever with over $16 Billion budgeted for 2005.

One project that's really interesting is Prometheus which will focus on electric rocket motors using nuclear power which will enable us to shorten considerably trip times to mars and enable JIMO which will be a landmark mission.

http://spacenews.dancebeat.info/article.php/20040921113625859

Fact is, there is more stuff going on now than ever before, its just not publicized very well you have to look for it.


> It's a pity that America has no motivation unless there's an enemy...
>
> If China goes Lunar, we'll go Martian. Of that I am certain. Everything else
> is in doubt.
>
> Still, I have high hopes for the ISS. There is knowledge to be
> discovered and we're a curious race.
>

I beleive the next great push to explore will be corporately run or sponsored.As resources diminish new exploits in space will become financally justified and important to remain competitive.

The US cannot afford it without massive cuts in other programs.

http://www.toptips.com/debtclock.html

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> The US cannot afford it without massive cuts in other programs.
>
> http://www.toptips.com/debtclock.html
>

It's a real catch-22, the homegrown goodness from US space exploration has kept US companies ahead of the world in a number of sectors. Aerospace is a good example (maybe the only one, but I doubt it), durring the years we were pushing our way into space Boeing and MacDonald Douglass did very well. Thats a high profit, exportable commodody that certainly makes a dent in trade deficites (when they're selling). GE also benefited, and in the same way brought money back to this country.

Space exploration in the US, needs to be tied to ROI for a while. That is what we spend needs to come back fairly quickly. First step along this "new" path is to drop our launch costs. The shuttle launch costs are about $23K per pound, a 140lb person costs just over $3.2M to send into space. Change that to say $500K (a bit more than $3000/lb) and things get better, there are some systems that claim they can get this down to roughly $6/lb. This is the current stumbling block, and the same players mentioned earlier stand to make considerable monetary gains while dropping the cost to orbit. The techniques should be applicable to more Earthly applications, this leads to more international contracts (and the current weak dollar helps).

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Still looking for something profound or inspirational to place here.