Space exploration

There seems to be a renewed interest in space exploration, especially in big projects, lately. Or is that just my impression?

We had NASA saying that we'll have people on the moon again by 2018, which seems to fit with what Pres. Bush said a few months ago. Very interesting project, and I hope it does happen (still, 13 years is a long time to sustain funding...).

Then the August edition of IEEE Spectrum has a cover story on space elevators, making the point that now would be a good time to start building one. A space elevator could reduce the cost of putting materials in orbit from US$20,000 a kilogram to around $200. According to a presentation I found at spaceelevator.com, the budget for a single elevator is around $10 billion US dollars, already including legal costs (I can imagine the cost of liability insurance...). Meanwhile, an American private company (Liftport Group) got FAA clearance to perform tests related to building an elevator; their homepage even counts down to their expected lift-off date (12 April 2018; what is it with 2018?).

Interestingly, the NASA plans for space exploration in the late 1960s included permanent moon bases by the early 1980s, and manned missions to Mars by 1985. Even the Shuttles should have been in space by 1973, if I'm not mistaken (the first launch was in 1981). We all know what happened, of course. Even the Apollo program only really succeeded because of the Russian competition, which prompted Kennedy's challenge (put a man on the moon and bring him back by 1969); we don't have anything like that now. Let's wait and see.