[marron]

Whoever leads in the development of space technologies is going to own the next century. If that is someone other than the US, we will take our place on the shelf of has-been countries right next to Britain.

Right now the competition is still fairly open. Any country, or company, willing to invest at the right point can leapfrog its way to a place in the sun, ahead of all of us.

But space technology is never really going to take off, or bear fruit, until it opens up to private actors, companies, investors, entreprenuers. And that isn't going to happen until some mission brings home some interesting core samples from some neighboring body.

I envision a two-track program as being the best we can do. A slow track, as we slowly develop the technologies for maintaining a permament human presence in orbit, and hopefully very soon on the moon, and improving the technologies for the heavy lifting into orbit, and higher speed propulsion.

In parallel, we should be developing the robots that will bring back the core samples from the Moon, from Mars, from the near asteroids. It will just take a couple of interesting samples to blow the lid off this thing.

Until that happens, it will take government money to seed the research. If we don't do it, someone else will, and our grandkids will be working for them. Probably washing their cars, and cleaning their houses.

[deadmenvote]

but

yes, we have superman

[RightWhale]

Whoever leads in the development of space technologies is going to own the next century. If that is someone other than the US, we will take our place on the shelf of has-been countries

And the century after. Has-been? America would quickly move to second-rate country status if it were to drop manned space exploration. That won't happen. NASA will emerge stronger after this disaster, and the space program should gain a fresh and vigorous goal. We have to reach out to the moon again, and to Mars, that's what should be done.