The Next Fifty Years In Space

MarkWhittington writes "2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Space Age, agreed by most to have begun with the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik, on October 4th, 1957. While some are taking stock of the last fifty years of space exploration, noting what has been accomplished and, more importantly, what has not been accomplished, others are wondering what the next fifty years might bring."

Comments

Re:Commercialization is the key.

[rtb61]

That is what it actually boils down to, solve the whole gravity thing and then there will actually be a space age, with out tackling gravity we can only tinker about the edges. Private will not achieve more than government, it never has, it just spends lots of money advertising claims that it has, so it can suck up all the public funds it can get hold of. The current example of growing failures and corrupting everything that was handed over to private intrests only point to the reason why the public elected the government to look after those things in the first place.

So that whole tricky gravity drive thing is what needs to be the focus, shifting tons of cargo into space and not tons of fuel, after all, rockets are really, really, primitive technology.