The declining public support for space exploration

On Jan 31, 2008, at 9:03 PM, sailor.barsoom wrote:
> Of course it's become cliche to gripe, "Where's my flying car?
> Where's my Lunar vacation?" But you see, a lot of us believed it was
> going to happen. And we not only see that it hasn't, we see nothing
> that makes us think that it ever will. As long as NASA could convince
> us that they were opening the Final Frontier for the rest of us, we
> were happy to support them. But now it looks like the space program
> is one Lewis and Clark expedition after another, in which wagon trains
> never head west. One Captain Cook expedition after another, but no
> Royal Hawaiian Hotel for the rest of us.
>

I feel your pain also. And for exactly that reason, I'm not a huge
fan of NASA any more, and haven't been for some years. VSE changes
this slightly, in that at least they're taking an interest in the
Moon (which is the obvious next step for humanity). But I have
little faith that they'll actually bust that frontier open for us, or
anybody.

However, I'm quite excited by what I'm seeing lately in the
commercial sector. Real companies with real money are bending real
metal, and they have real business plans to make a real profit at
it. Richard Branson is no slouch when it comes to business, and he
sees opportunity here. Many others are following close on his
heels. Most will fail, but some will succeed. I really think that
in 5 years, civilian passengers in space in a year will grossly
outnumber government employees. And yes, that'll be suborbital, but
orbital won't be far behind -- and we've got Robert Bigelow already
working on places for those people to go.

It wasn't always like this. I can easily remember my days in grad
school, 15 years ago, when things looked bleak indeed. Back then
NASA was clearly going nowhere; and we had the Artemis Society,
trying to do something private and innovative, but clearly lacking a
real business to make it happen. There was that company that
proposed to drop payloads and rovers on the Moon for fun and profit,
and they were always going to launch about 12 months from whenever
you happened to ask. People were making noises, but nothing was
coming of it.

Now we have government probes from several countries studying the
Moon again; Google putting up serious money for a private lunar
probe, and several serious groups entering the race; SpaceX building
an entirely new launcher system using minimum-cost design; Branson
and a few others putting serious work into suborbital tourism; and
Bigelow with not one but two successful unmanned inflatable space
stations in orbit, with plans for full-size manned versions running
ahead of schedule. These are exciting times! ...But NASA has
almost nothing to do with it.

Best,
- Joe