Don't bet on it. America realized the greatest dreams when it was an oil-rich country. Now, dependent on imports of energy, it is cannibalizing it's former luxuries - space program, welfare, but also medical care for the population that is being hit by steadily growing unemployment.

The same ol' market-fundamentalist fairy tale. In reality, many achievements came to see the day thanks to government programs (and the army that does not care about next-quarter profitability) - the Internet, GPS, and others. No private enterprise would be ever able to justify the cost of launching all those GPS satellites, let alone obtains means to do so.

Soviet space program was entirely government-run, and it achieved tremendous successes including sending first human into space.

agree with sarath 01

 i am beginning to feel 'old' lol.  i remember reading asimov, when he was a new writer, and seeing star trek, with the first interracial kiss ever on TV, and 'communicators' etc.  Now its all passe.  men on the moon, instantaneous com links, 3d TV and holograms, artificial limbs, and face transplants. 

Bu, while 1984 has arrived about 25 years late, there is hope.  but, the weird thing is this:  in all the almost 60 years I have seen, one constant remains:  Humans are still to obsessively interested in the welfare of their own little group, and to hell with everyone else, and to hell with the future of the planet and future generations of humans.  We have great tools, but lousy morals, awesome technological accomplishments but to little common sense nor wisdom to deploy them with true kindness.   And so it continues.... 

Nice OP, especially the part about not getting into space policy arguments.

When I was a wee kid, my parents bought our first TV so we could watch the moon landing. My father once got a job to shoot photos of the VAB, and he came back to tell us that he'd been in a building so tall that it could form rainclouds inside. When I was in high school, our physics teacher led us out the classroom window and onto the soccer field so we could watch the contrail of the first shuttle launch--not a beachside view, but pretty cool for a North Florida school kid.

I'm glad to hear turnout at this last launch was so large. And not just for sentimental reasons. I'm a native Floridian and our tattered economy could use every bit of that old-time tourism we can get, even if it's mostly 'internal' tourism, which I suspect might be the case.

Yes, I'll miss the shuttle........I grew up close enough to the launch facilities that shortly after the rockets go out of sight we would feel the house shake and hear the noise (kinda like popcorn in microwave). I worry about what the 7,000 jobs lost will do to an area with over 12% unemployed already. Thanks Obama Administration.

I was sitting in a 2-man raft just beyond the breakers south of Turtle Mound when the first shuttle went up. We had spent the night before on the beach being drained by a zillion mosquitoes. I remember standing in the yard with my wife when Challenger came apart. She was supposed to be leaving for class and I was still working from home. I've missed very few of the launches...out of town for one or two and cloud cover for some others.

The thing I won't miss are the damn sonic booms.....scares the you know what out of a person when they're sleeping.

Much as I'll miss the shuttle, I really miss the Apollo launches. They make the shuttle seem like a 4th of July firework in comparison.

Side note - this reminded me of my fav series about space exploration and NASA.  Its a 6-part series that uses a substantial amount of footage from NASA and has plenty of interviews with the folks that went up.

Anyway, its on amazon and you can get the whole thing for $10 digitally or like $2 an episode.  Suggest giving it a look if you have not seen it (they have a free preview).  Series is called "When we left earth."

http://www.amazon.com/Project-Mercury-Ordinary-Supermen/dp/B001Q4HZBG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1310249721&sr=1-1

That was on the Discovery Channel a while back, wasn't it? I think I saw the first episode or two, but missed the rest. I'm glad it's cheap on Amazon, I'm going to have to finish it.

What we should have been doing was figuring out how to travel from planet to planet and focus on building up bases on the moon and mars for stepping stones. I hear that there are resources out in space that are worth quite a bit of money, not to mention asteroids also contain a lot of valuable minerals and metals.(Even the moon has some valuable resources, and who knows what mars has, we certainly should be trying to claim these before other do as well) 

Learning how to exploit these things should be our top priority considering our situation. Also not to mention finding a new home and learning how to build up the infrastructure is also important, Earth is dying we will need a new one in the the short term future.

Just sitting on a space station and looking through telescopes is not getting us closer to that goal.

You've got to crawl before you can learn how to walk. The ISS is the crawl...........getting to other places is the walk. You won't get there if you don't know how and don't bring up Apollo eleven either. Everything was a lot less expensive then. The amount of money spent on the first moon shot couldn't buy a decent spaceship today.

No the "crawl" is establishing a base on the moon and mars, we already have that ability according to NASA. The walk will be speeding it up and streamlining the process. Everything starts out rough. But ISS is not helping towards that goal, its more focused on random experiments that are useless to the general public and cannot readily be applied for space travel/colonization.

Oddly enough, the ISS is used to test many of the systems that would be required for missions to the Moon and Mars... In the interest of stretching this metaphor to the point of absurdity, if Moon/Mars bases are crawling, what does that make, you know, the last 50 years of space exploration? Pregnancy?

If the ISS is useless to the general public, what does that make the other space programs? The public never got to book trips on the Apollo Missions. And don't mention the technology that came out of it like better computers, because odds are good the research performed on the ISS will lead to similar things.

As always, corporations riding on the coat tails and blood, sweat and tears of others.  Here in Oz we had public [government] owned companies running our electricity and phone infrastructure, but now the private sector run them and we are paying through the nose for those resources which were/are ours to begin with, by virtue of the fact they were paid for by the taxpayer.

When government sold off these taxpayer funded infrastructures, they tried to justify by saying that private enterprise will bring down prices because competition will drive them down... yeah, right!!!! Since our electricity was privatised prices have risen more than 300% and many are now living in the cold and dark because they cannot afford lighting/heating.  Electricity disconnections [due to inability to pay] are at record highs, yet most states electricity was hiked up prices by 17 1/2% as of July 1st.  Next year they are touting 30% increases... so much for government wisdom.

So no, I do not believe private enterprise will contribute anything to space exploration.  It'll be a take take situation where the user pays through the nose for something that was theirs to begin with.... ala corporations riding on the coat tails of taxpayers money.

Hehe... Doc is so old. he was there when caveman first discovered fire.

It's just "one of those things".....if you got them to stay under Mach1 they'd be 'staying' on the ground....;)

The other programs produced tangible results (the moon land and various technological breakthroughs, even velcro)

The ISS has not helped in anyway achieve a base on the moon or mars or making better space ships. Nor have there been any advancesments or breakthroughs produced.

I can tell you've done your research Here's a list of the research done on the ISS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_ISS. Notice how much of it has to do with the long-term effects of spaceflight on the human body, materials to make future spacecraft out of, and systems for said future spacecraft. Gee, I wonder where any of that stuff would be useful. Certainly not a trip to Mars that would take months or anything.

Oh, and look at that: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/12/new-ion-engine-may-be-tested-o.html There are plans to test an ion engine on the ISS if the ground tests are successful.

And here we have remote ultrasound: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/ADUM.html It allows doctors on Earth to examine astronauts in space. To quote, "Using a modification of this technology, crewmembers as far away as Mars could obtain remote examinations from doctors on Earth. This type of capability is essential for long-term space exploration." (emphasis added). It goes on to describe the pratical, on Earth applications of such technology. Wow, an experiment that's good for going to Mars, has tangible results, and it's on the ISS!

double ditto... has captivated me since I was a kid... I grew up telling people when they asked, that I wanted to be an astronaut...

was chatting to v some time back, about a night launch taking place that night... and how he should be able to see some of it from where he was... and how I'd love to have been able to see one live.....  he videotaped it for me from his neighbour's porch where the best view was... even though there was a fair bit of cloud that night... was fabulous to watch it with the anticpation and oohs and ahhs & commentary with the neighbours as it flashed between the clouds and appeared for awhile in a clear patch.... was the closest I could feel to being there...   ...it prompts the true use of the word.... 'awesome'...

I firmly believe that the "space colonization" dream is utterly impossible - it's just an extrapolation of the old colonists' dream coming to America. This time, however, the very laws of physics are not our friends. I recommend to everyone this excellent article I found on Slashdot years ago:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html

Just a single quote: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.

...

Colonize the Gobi desert, colonise the North Atlantic in winter — then get back to me about the rest of the solar system!"

In other words, if we are admitting the possibility of killing Earth's biosphere soon, we are also admitting our instincts has led us to an evolutionary dead end, and that despite all the rational thinking, we are a suicidal species. Compare it to the current "perpetual growth" economic propaganda, and you get a picture of clear insanity.

The first man in space happened the same year I was born. I have grown up and lived with the idea of people in space my entire life. I am amazed that I meet people often who never even heard of the Skylab space station. They honestly think that the ISS is our first space station in orbit.

I think the end of the shuttle program is somewhat sad, but then again those ships are very old now and it's time we came up with a better program... when we can afford it.

Right now, the tax dollars are in short supply so it doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to continue expensive programs with little real return on the investment. I think it's about time for private enterprise to move in the direction of making space travel profitable in some way.

How that may happen, if it happens, remains to be seen. It's even possible that there really is no way to make it a profitable enterprise. I do think space exploration is still important from a scientific standpoint, but am not sure it will lead to private companies making a profit from direct commercial involvement as opposed to contracting to the government.

If there is a way, some clever entrepreneur will find it.

Yep. And I got the T shirt.

Are you talking about WC here? Maybe your working too much ID !

Great pics man

Nothing is static.  The shuttles, state of the art in the early 80s, are antiques by today's standards.  instead of upgrading them as technology raced ahead, NASA seemed to want to stay with "what worked" (even though it did not on a couple of occasions).  The program could have continued with just a little bit of planning.  But now it is gone, and the replacement?  Not really ready for prime time yet.

But private industry has caught up and may make space a viable commercial venture yet!  With machines that put the shuttles to shame.  I am saddened by the ending of the program, as my own cousin was one of the primary designers way back when (he left before the Challenger episode).

Everyone here should read this for more information on commercial space programs:
WHY THE US CAN BEAT CHINA: THE FACTS ABOUT SPACEX COSTS

Tribes of nomads live in the Gobi desert already. And honestly there is no point in colonizing the gobi because there are no valuable resources, while space offers quite a few in abundance that make the extreme cost worth while, but as it is no one is currently willing to put in the investment. Even the moon has valuable resources that can be used in nuclear fusion and have an estimated worth of several billion dollars, at least according to the science channel. And asteroids have been documented to have several trillion dollars worth of valuable minerals... which I dont think I need to mention would be a great asset if we could get them.