EDITORIAL: Why are we turning our backs on space?

Ginrummy's right: The Apollo program, for all it's glories, lacked "Flexibility" and couldn't be easily applied to things aside from putting people on the moon. Though in fact, even if we had just retained the Saturn Vs and used them as HLLVs (Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles) putting up a hundred tons of cargo at a pop, we'd still be better off than we are now.

If you look at the earliest visions of a responsible space program, you end up with spacecraft to build a big, permanent space station, which is then supplied by shuttles, and used as an orbital construction site to buld large, reusable spacecraft to go to the moon, venus, and mars. Von Braun and Ley's original lunar exploration plans involved a fleet of three ships landing a score of people who immediately build a semi-permanent moonbase by canibalizing one of the ships, and then spend a couple months there exploring. Granted, rather grandiose for people who hadn't even discovered the Van Allen belt yet, but still...

The fact of the matter is that there are unquestionably a ton of 'cash crops' in space. Solar Power Satellites could convert solar energy to electricity and beam it to the ground with 7x the efficiency of ground-based solar cells. Orbital industries could mass produce things like near-perfect and nearly-frictionless ball bearings for industry, and grow perfect crystals for industry as well. The moon appears to be piled high in HE3 trapped in the soil, which is potentially a great energy resource, there's fissionables out there too. There's massive amounts of organic material and even whater trapped in the chondritic asteroids, and other stuff as well. Mercury would be a great location for solar collectors beaming energy to earth at an even higher level of efficiency than orbial solar cells. Failing all that, the far side of the moon could be wallpapered with solar cells that could beam energy back. There are limitless resources out there, many of which could be used on earth, many more of which could be used in situ for the benefit of colonists.

Comparing the colonization to the rest of the solar system to the colonization of the new world isn't exactly a 1:1 comparison, since the new world was already habitable, whereas the other planets and moons aren't, but we're clever little plastic-working apes. We can figure something out, and we can thrive, and we *need* to do it.

Aside from a breif flury of activity in 1975, NASA has never had any interest in doing it. Nor have the Soviets/Russians, ever. As Stephen Baxter said in one of his books, "NASA's job is limiting access to space, not increasing it, and anyone who doesn't realize that simply hasn't been paying attention."

Despite some early wishfull thinking, the only reason that the US comitted so hard and fast to space was to beat the Commies and get points in the cold war. A progressive plan for a colonly would have started differently, as I recently read in a 1958 science book that stated an undebatable given that step one of going to the moon would be building a space station. No one even speculated that it could be done any other way. Instead we skipped all that with a large multi-stage rocket that although it worked to get us to the moon faster than anything else, didn't pave the way for any evolutionary steps for a permanent space presence. It did the one job of being first fastest, and when done we basically had to start over with new different plans for the shuttle and orbital space stations. We have no motivation besides a bit of science that hasn't been very profitable. What would ultimately be a kick in the pants for us would be if China started a serious moon colony effort or even a major space station. National defense would finally back the assertion that we cannot give up the high ground to another country and remain safe.

The comparison of colonizing other planets to the colonization of the Americas is one I hadn't considered before. I was under the impression that resources on other planets (minerals and real estate... am I forgetting anything?) are currently too cost-prohibitive. And that that the practical benefits that we've already reaped from the various space programs weren't from any resources in space, but from the technology developed to get us into space, trickling down to civilian applications.

I confess that this is all based on hearsay rather than research, so what am I missing? How will colonizing the Moon or Mars put the colonizer nation on the fast track to becoming the next superpower?