Where's the Industrial Research?

The USA is quite diverse. To say that young people here are not interested in space anymore is obviously an opinion. It conflicts with my experience, but all I can offer are antidotes. I am going on a speaking tour next week to speak at several universities on space. Young people are interested in lots of things, though many, as has always been the case, are not interested in having any type of an industrial career. Some want to be ministers, other lawyers, others physicians, etc. But I teach a course on Colonizing Space at the University of North Florida. A few students come here just because of that course, and still others are very interested in space. Some of these get jobs with NASA, and aerospace companies. Negative "summary statements" such as that young people are not interested in space anymore are not only not useful, but are in addition most likely not true. But, I can also not say what the statistics are.
Before becoming an academic, I worked as an engineer on the Atlas rocket and as a research scientist in electronics. One could get fired for letting others outside those companies know what we were working on, or how it was going. So I suggest that companies with what they think are good ideas for making money in space will not discuss those ideas here. You can take the lack of such discussion as the lack of good ideas if you wish, but I think it is not a very enlightened view. I would take any discussion of an idea to make money in space here as the lack of any realistic prospect for those discussing it of making money with that idea in space. Not that these discussions are not worth while. We do need free forums for the development of ideas, but once a good idea surfaces, do not expect it to be discussed further here.
Sincerely, Jay Huebner