Re: Final shuttle goes up - US manned missions to space over for a whi
The problem with Space is that there's nothing profitable out there yet, beyond sticking objects (not people) into various Earth orbits. That's not to say it can't be insanely profitable in the future, but it's not looking likely in the medium-term. So no-one really needs to put people up there right now. Governments have better things to do, and to spend money on, and frankly I don't blame them in the slightest for deprioritising space exploration.
All the great explorations of the past have been financially driven, with science second at best: Columbus discovered America while trying to break a trade route monopoly, Livingstone explored the heart of Africa with the word Commerce as a prominent part of his personal motto, Lewis & Clark had clear Asian and resource commercial goals to their expedition, Marco Polo was a merchant... I could go on, but the point is obvious: we haven't found anyone to trade with in space, and it currently costs more to extract resources from extraterrestial locations than it does to do so on Earth.
Manned space travel will only really take off (pardon the pun) when it becomes too costly to carry out the equivalent activity on Earth. The tourism/leisure industry can only go so far; until the technology becomes cheap enough to support the mass market, the infrastructure it can support in space is quite limited.
When either resources become too expensive to extract from Earth, or the environment becomes sufficiently inhospitable to be a strong motivator to look elsewhere, then we'll happily spend the vast sums required to explore further afield, enabling rapid space exploration. Until then, it's simply more cost-effective to stay in our backyard. There's no need to bewail this state of affairs. Man WILL explore the stars, we WILL eventually colonise other planets, and so on. Just not yet, because it's too expensive.
The only people who could break this paradigm are private equity/venture capital funds willing to play financial long shots for the prospect of massive future returns. And even most of them have shorter long shots (you know what I mean) on Earth rather than off it.
The only alternative is if a security risk arises, requiring territorial occupation of space. This was of course the driver to much of the space exploration of the 50s/60s. If there's a similar security need, then it will take place again, but even with China and India's ambitions, I don't really see the security risk as being sufficient to prompt such investment again within the next decade or two.
