“As we leave the moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. God speed the crew of Apollo 17.” – Gene Cernan
Why is no one interesting in space travel any more? What is all this about “practicality?” Politics? We last visited in 1972, right when we were getting good at it. It saddens me.
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It’s because people have trouble seeing a point to anything that is farther away than their country. Practicality be damned! If we can do anything to get people stirred up and interested in something more significant than the boring trivial stuff that takes up newspaper space right now it will be a great accomplishment. We could discover a lot of things, and a lot of good could come out of space exploration. But people still poke around without vision, abandoning the hope filled names like Apollo and Voyager for more down to earth names like "International Space Station".
There are some people interested in going farther than "faster, cheaper, better". The Artemis Project <www.artemis.org> is trying to go privately to the moon–and I think they could do it, too, if only they had about a billion dollars to work with. They could be profitable, too. There was also an article by Homer Hickam (the hero of _October Sky_) about the potential of nuclear rockets–one of the things NASA isn’t putting any real effort into.
I just wish people would do *something*.
"If we can do anything to get people stirred up and interested in something more significant than the boring trivial stuff…"
Not a chance. I mean, Osama Bin Laden blew up two massive buildings by crashing full commercial jet liners into them. And we’re so over it. Now its just a 24×7 "war on terror." Well gee whiz, lets see what the terror warni for today is!