To be honest, when I heard John Young report, "Houston, Columbia is out of Flight Level 4500 at Mach 25!" on the re-entry of the first Shuttle Flight, I thought we finally had a less expensive, reliable access to space. Obviously, time and circumstances proved that to be a false hope! <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" /><br /><br />Now, I would hope to be optimistic, but frankly, given the American public's short attention span (which applies to 9/11 visa vis Iraq, and other things that would have held our attention during WWII, etc.), and the political climate today, I'm hopeful, but somewhat guarded in my outlook on the future of American human space exploration.<br /><br />The most bothersome thing is the amount of negative comments coming from previously ardent supporters of almost ANY manned space effort (prior to there being much of anything beyond LEO). Sure, we'd like to see some dramatically new crewed spaceship! It would be wonderful if we had a SSTO that was inexpensive, reliable and POSSIBLE! Sure, we'd like to have fast access to Mars and research bases on the Moon. Sure, we'd like to have warp drive, etc. But right now, none of those things are realistically possible.<br /><br />So we have the choice of either accepting what we can build, based on PROVEN previous technology AND what we can AFFORD! So, for right now, it is either "Apollo on steroids!" or NOTHING! And I guarrantee that if we kill human space exploration and try to substitute robotic probes exclusively, within one or two Congressional and perhaps the next administration change, there will BE NO UNmanned space program. And if that happens, America will lose our technological lead in the world economy!<br /><br />We also have a problem in interesting young people in getting into science and technology fields, much less getting into aerospace fields. This has a potential for a real debacle down the line!!! We MUST develop programs (such as I have started) to reach kids as early as possible