I'm a little bit of a science fiction nerd, and I always dreamed of becoming something like a rocket scientist. Sometimes I still dream of studying physiscs. (Lets be honest, the first mission to mars won't have a lawyer on board). Recent developments and bickering, however, have made "the futue" move further and further away.

I stumbled upon this video "by" Neil deGrasse Tyson:

http://www.viddler.com/v/fec4de60

And I personally think it's awesome and captures excactly my sentiments whenever I think of what happened to the space program.

Here is another clip, which is always one that I really love and which looks upon this from the other side

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw&t=2m28s

People should read Stanislaw Lem more. In his worlds, this would be perfectly possible, if not even required. ;)

Regarding the space programs: I can't view the first video for some reason, but I can understand why space projects are currently low priority. They are either prestige projects, or they are extremely expensive undertakings which won't pay off until decades later. The current economic situation doesn't provide a lot of room for either. It's sad, but not necessarily a bad decision.

You can put your hope into the Chinese, they are the most likely to be wanting to increase their reputation, and to be able to actually pull off a successful space mission. Russia obviously tries to do spectacular things (flag under north pole, drilling into the south pole, etc.), but their space program is underfunded and in desperate need of a reboot.

Maybe this link will work for you

http://thechive.com/2012/03/11/we-stopped-dreaming-video/

It is how I received the video.

Maybe our dreams have become more reasonable lately?

Maybe the bets should not be on national or international programmes but on private enterprises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_SpaceShipOne

Exactly, our hope now relies on private investors and developers.

It's still sad though, NASA's budget's keeps getting slashed year after year while scientists have to waste their time against the antiscience lobby (Climate change deniers, intelligent design proponents, antivaccine people...).

It's not like its a "waste" of money people! The space program brings great advancements not just in science, but in education, prestige, economy all the way to domestic appliances! It's the future, with the obscene amount of TAX money that goes into the Defence Department (while totally understandable), its infuriating the scrapes NASA gets.

The demise of the US space program occurred a long time ago. The space shuttle was fatally flawed from its origin in the Nixon administration. Its excessive cost and absurd operational forecasts led to the deliberate destruction of all other US orbital launch capability. When the first "accident" occurred in 1986, the US was left without any launch capability at all.

Obama trying conquer the Middle East? Phooey. We all know what the Bush administration deliberately ignored: it's a lot easier to occupy a defenseless country than to get out of it with your dignity intact.

Trilarion has it right: launching useful things into orbit no longer requires basic research or government subsidy. It is properly being converted to private enterprise. And it should stay that way.

Yeah, he can't even shut down the Guantamo Bay, poor guy. And his administration is threating Iran with another war. (well, some EU countries also. Polish sidekicks will be pleased to participate, too, as always)

Space programme might look unnecessary for most of the people because current technology doesn't give us any opportunities to travel.

But maybe we will find Protean artifacts on Mars, have you though about that? :D

Read the Stephen Baxter Manifold Trilogy for how that might work out.

I disagree. (And I really wish I had another example). In the, errm, 30s we were very technophile in Germany. And technological progress was the main state agenda with fascinating breakthroughs in many areas that the goverrmental sector sponsored and somewhat enforced for, errm, later endevours. While this has lead to some rather unsavoury political results, the technological gains were undeniably massive.

Governmental founded research has been a strong scientific and economic engine in Germany since the times of our Kaiser. Companies often are afraid of making that "important leap" without massive governmental backing. Silicon Valley and the technological rise of Taiwan were direct results of governmental programs (Well, Silicon Valley was the results of an "hands of approach", so this might just be an agrument for the opposite. Never the less, Stanford is publicly founded so tax dollars played some role in it). You must be willing to lose money, willing to gamble, to make great leaps forward. The private sector won't do this, especially as there is no money in space exploration.

I think you need to encourage the "view forward" with programms like the NASA. Governmental programms were everybody can participate for a "greater good". Maybe a second "Sputnik shock" courtesy of the chinese will encourage this.

Private sector loves to gamble. But there's something more. If some company invests millions of dollars on some invention, all progress stop.

Said company has to earn money on that invention first, and then develop further technology.

There's no time to wait, when it comes to space programms, because our technology needs to develop fast.

I have one. Look at the big particle accelerator in Cern/Switzerland. If the public looses interest in that field and turns this machine off there is much less/no chance of finding out in how many dimensions we live.

Basic research by definition has no real use. It might prove useful many years later, but even that is not sure. Knowledge in itself does not heal, feed, cloth people. If people decide that spending money instead on consuming things, they can do so. Collecting knowledge is a cultural thing.

However, we are still doing astrophysical basic research. Only for this you do not really need to send somebody to Mars. You just send a machine into orbit taking data. And this is still done.

I think that sending people into space is something we definitely should commercialize. It requires a different kind of research that companies can provide better.

The dreams have gone, because they proved very difficult to realize. Maybe dreams just stay dreams in the end? (Me saying this and being a big Asimov, Lem, Star Trek, ... fan in my youth.)

No wonder of the world has ever been made with bean counters demanding quarterly profits and positive ROIs for every investment.

Don't go getting happy about privatization of things too expensive and long-term for corporations to greenlight. You think the pyramids were built with an eye to lining a CEOs pockets? The great wall? Even the internet's profitability was a happy mistake, a coincidence of capitalism. There's a place for everything, I suppose, but the place of business is not in infrastructure or long-term projects. Private sector sucks at that, big time.

There's a big difference between manned space expeditions and orbital launches.

The basic and applied research are gone out of putting things in orbit. It's now a transportation business, only with rockets instead of semitrailers. The role of government in this should be the promotion and regulation of private for-profit launch capacity, and to be a customer of private launch facilities for launching instruments made for basic and applied research.

There's a very real and debatable question whether it is worthwhile to conduct manned space expedition. Even small humans are big, heavy, and fragile payloads, and their life support systems are even more so. The social repercussions of allowing humans to die in space, which NASA has allowed to happen as a corner-cutting measure more than once, are unacceptable regardless of the benefit. Finally it is not clear what human astronauts can do now that is not equally possible to do using robots, except promote national pride at tremendous expense.

I feel for you.

Needing multi-million dollars equipment to do what you love always struck me as a big hassle.

For me, a big draw for software development has always been that you can use it to create stuff without needing someone else's approval or money.

Apparently, the patent industry is hard at work to rectify that situation, but they're not there yet.