It is. I watch with RAPT attention each shuttle launch whenever I can. I love to watch them live on TV. To see all those millions of parts working together perfectly is an art. I would love to see one live. The only time I've actually seen one was looking over my right shoulder as I was flying up J75 toward Charlotte and I saw one arcing up over the Atlantic. We were at 35,000'..but it was still pretty cool..

I'll bet most Americans couldn't tell you how many Americans are on orbit right now...

From the ISS site:

The ISS Progress 36 spacecraft is scheduled to launch this evening at 10:45 p.m. EST (9:45 a.m. Wednesday, Baikonur time), loaded with 1,940 pounds of propellant, 106 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 2,683 pounds of spare parts and supplies. On Thursday shortly before 11:30 p.m., Progress will dock automatically to the aft port of the Zvezda service module using the Kurs docking system.

Even the resupply missions are fascinating. Wish there was more coverage of them too..

I was 12 years old when Sputnik 1 orbited, and watched avidly all through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. It seemed at the time almost a given that by now (2010) we would be at least in the outer planetary area of our solar system, maybe even gearing up for the first interstellar voyage.

Somehow, the enthusiasm and support started to fade amongst most people after Apollo 13...so much so that the last Apollos never flew. Then the Shuttle never had any real charisma...it was just a orbital truck, and the deep space missions were all robotic. Fascinating, true, but not in the same league as the manned missions to new worlds.

I think that basically space travel became equated in folks' minds with boring orbital missions, and there was nothing to seize the imagination like the Apollo flights. The polis soon cottoned onto this and felt safe in running down the priority of interplanetary missions without fear of an outcry, and even now any opposition to the loss of the Constellation program will be jobs orientated, not philosophical.

Maybe if the Soviets had hung in there and carried the Cold War into space...?

Oh God - It's already happened: Tweet from space..

Hey, I'm not 45 years old and I remember the Moon shot! I don't remember much of 1969, but I remember watching live as the US flag was unfurled on the Moon....it was imprinted into hard memory. My mom still has the scrapbook I made that has anything even remotely connected to the Apollo missions clipped from newspapers in it. I even cut out a boxed weather forecast that included the phase of the Moon. Hey, at four my reading wasn't the best; it said "Moon" and had a picture of it.

I re-read your earlier post beach. Guess manned space flight is too trivial to hold our attention now a days. Still darn hard to do. I wish the likes of Rutan well, I'm a big admirer, but it takes alot of money to make dreams come true.

Probably won't happen till another war ocurrs, or a big race to get somewhere that another super-power is feared to get there first.

Shuttle has been flying for almost 30yrs now, That's 7 1/2 political administrations. More than enough blame to go around for not doing more than putting a tin can up for the Russians to use when we're done.

I was negative 2 years old when we first landed on the moon. As an egg in my Mom's ovary though I was cheering on the crew..

And you're preaching to the choir piper..I agree that manned space flight (hell..unmanned space flight too!) is extremely difficult. It isn't hard to just throw something up into space, but to have all that stuff work right and get useful science (or information, or whatever you are studying) out of it is extremely difficult.

I do think that the space race is over. National pride..even for those just now aspiring to the stars, is overshadowed by the "been there, done that" mindset. I don't think the Russians are going to do much in space beyond what we and the Europeans want to do jointly (with the exception, of course, of military satellites and technlogy). The expense is just so prohibitive, and the social and economic times make it hard to justify. Sad but true.

I have personal thoughts on the what and why of the space program..and how I feel it is a microcosm of humanity in general..but that isn't a discussion for SimHQ..

My wife's brother was an engineer at NASA during Apollo, and I remember sitting in the school auditorium to watch Alan Shepard's flight on a tiny black and white TV. Like many of y'all I have watched triumph and tragedy, but the biggest thing this abandonment shows me is our national pessimism which seems to have overshadowed our once great optimism. The outcome of that loss is going to be hard to live through.

I have seen this too (or what seems to be this attitude), over and over. Even the "Apollo on steroids" catch phrase... Did Apollo aim to build a long term research station on the moon? Did Apollo make use of separate vehicle designs for crew and heavy cargo mission requirements? Did Apollo have any forward mission plan to Mars?

Even the "steroids" bit imparts the image of a punk, half-assed, non-achievement.

Which is unfortunate, because I don't feel that successfully maintaining a lunar based research station for a decade plus would be any of those things.

The space program is a waste of time and resources, there are many more useful things scientists could be doing (find a cure for my dads cancer would be a good start).

There is nothing for us in the solar system, what idiot would want to live on the moon or mars?
And the nearest star is over 4 light years away. The only way we are ever going to get there won't be on rockets or any kind of manned spacecraft.

I can see your reasoning. I always figured that if there was intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe, they would just come to Earth and find us eventually. It's much cheaper for us that way.

As far as permanent settlements on the moon and Mars go, I dont think those will happen unless conditions on Earth get so incredibly bad that it starts threatening the existence of humanity.

I disagree though about the space program being a waste of time and resources. There are a lot of valuable things that are done besides manned exploration and like has been mentioned before, the total budget for NASA is quite miniscule compared to the overall budget. I dont know what the case is exactly with the European space agency but I have a feeling that its budget isn't that high either.

My father-in-law is one of the designer's of the Apollo spacecraft. I have seen some of the most amazing pictures of the testing they did with Apollo before it flew. I was talking with him last night (he's now 76 years young) about all the NASA talk, and his take on it was pretty interesting.

"NASA will never be what it was during Gemini/Mercury/Apollo. It can't be. Back then, money simply was not an object and in today's world money trumps all. Between the problems we have currently in the USA, and a Gov't (regardless of who is in power) that really can't see past thier nose let alone agree on anything, my guess is Mars will not be a USA accomplishment. It will be another country that achieves it, and the USA will be a sticker on the side of the Rocket. But, I won't be around to see it, and my guess is you won't either."

I can sit and listen to him talk all day. I simply love the guy. We were out in his garage one day, and I was messing around with this triangular piece of steel. It was damn heavy but the engineering on it was incredible. I asked him what the hell it was, and he replied "the tip of a Polaris missle"... :-)

-Outlaw

There are many, many, MANY other areas that receive FAR more funding than the space program, and give FAR less in the way of returns on investment. That's all I'm going to say, to keep this from WCE.

I have read, but have not seen official verification of the fact that American women spend more money on cosmetics than the entire space program. NASA is money FAR better spent! The spin offs from the space program benefit us all and a little research into that area may surprise anyone. The computers we are using to communicate on this forum are a prime example.

Exactly!

It's stunning how much we have learned from the space program....

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

-Outlaw

Although the event itself is pretty bad for you chaps Stateside (and space stuff in general), I think that this is a good time to get international. One thing that we learned a few decades ago was that we can't go alone in building a next-gen fighter, so joining up with other national entities gives you access to greater investment needed - that and when you involve outside partners, it's harder to can something just because the newly-incumbent government decides to go in a different direction.

If it wasn't for their propensity to throw people at problems with lower standards of safety, I wouldn't have thought that China or India would be able to make a manned Mars mission stick.

Sorry to hear about your father. Survival rates for the majority of cancers are improving all the time though so I hope the best for your family.

Truth of the matter is, if you discount everything else (spin offs, tech, yadda) there are only a handful of natural things that have the potential to completely obliterate the human race, and a planetary catastrophe is one of them. Not taking the steps to leave the earth, even if it's slow and a handful of people at a time is simply not a good course to take for the long term survival of our species. Besides, who isn't even curious about the riddles of the cosmos?

It took six pages before the fact that without the space race of which much of our technology (and medicine) has been derived from would not exist or have been severely delayed. We might be all typing on turbo XTs or TRS-80s right now..if at all.

On a personal level the recent announcement of the cancellation and seemingly incoherent long term plan leaves me incredibly depressed that as a nation we no longer have the pioneer spirit and strive to reach to that "other mountain". I realize we are in hard times now, but I firmly believe that the inspiration and hopes that inspire young generations to achieve has been diminished now, and can't be replaced by an accountant mindset.

A new NASA roadmap is expected to be outlined in the coming months. A few things that are likely to make the list which directly impact manned missions:

New technologies to allow for faster flight (this is huge)

Remote fueling stations

Asteroid rendezvous missions (more useful for a Mars mission than the Moon)

Testing of different habitat structures, for both on body locations and orbiting stations.

Pretty nifty stuff, and all of it is much needed groundwork for the big prize. I know it's a little disheartening that in the immediate/short term future we're not going to have men on another body, but it may have made the medium/long term goals much more realistic and attainable. Arguably more exciting too!

Wait a minute... If you had seen many of them without the cosmetics, you might feel differently. Remember, this boils down to the perpetuation of the species, after all...

OK, OK, just kidding. I agree that we have certainly received some impressive returns on the investment in our space program. As others have posted in here, I also vividly remember watching various launches, from Mercury on through to current times.

However, I find myself with a mixed reaction to the latest developments. In my mind, the U.S. government involves itself in way too many things that, Constitutionally speaking, it has no business being in. We have spent our way into a hole that is truly mind boggling. There remains a justification for the government to continue developing a space program... and it isn't technology transfer, or boltering national morale. The one constitutional basis, IMO, for continuing a space program is simply national defense. I'm not saying those other things are bad, or undesirable... I'm just saying that there is a constitutional rationale for government funding/involvment in some space activities. LEO based activities, as boring as they may seem to some, are chock full of potential/actual military value. Going to the moon, not so much. Going to Mars, (while far more interesting!!!) probably even far less. There are numerous U.S. Government expenditures I'd prefer to see cut before sawing on NASA, but that is not the way things are going down (for the time being, any ways...).

A part of me had hoped to see us on Mars during my lifetime. With all of the unwise choices that have been made over recent decades, that hope seems to have a vanishingly small chance of being realized. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The libertarian part of me would love to see private enterprise have more involvement in space. For a long term, sustainable presence in space, that really needs to happen. If somebody can make money at it, the incentive will keep the ball rolling.

This "new" approach that NASA is supposedly going to be utilizing could certainly help bootstrap more commercialization of space activities. If so, then some good will come out of it. The administration has "talked" but we will have to wait and see what "walks" out of the other end.

The only way I see a private company making money at it is via "space tourism' and considering the current ticket price for that service, it will remain a luxury item reserved only for the super rich. So yes, a company could make money at it but it would be an extremely niche market.