I agree with Dean's most recent post, that we need to continue to work toward manned exploration of space, but as I note in my comment there, unmanned exploration is also important.
I just came across a post on another blog pointing out that what we have done in the last forty years is non-trivial...
What the US didn't do in space since the end of Apollo:Put a human on the surface of another planet.What the US did do in space since the end of Apollo:Place a variety of advanced telescopes in spaceSent fly-by missions to every planet.Put orbiters around Earth, the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.Put landers in or on Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Titan
....and that's less than half the list.
Followup: Commenter Chuck makes an important point in that these were not strictly US accomplishments, and I did not intend to claim them as such. As I respond to him, even Apollo 11 was not strictly a US accomplishment, but required international cooperation... and these days, I think sharing the costs, benefits, and awesomeness all round benefits everyone.
Followup 2: Ah, but I just noticed that the author of the above post was claiming them as US accomplishments. I guess someone stands corrected, but I'm not sure if it's him or me.
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The Venus landers were all from the USSR, and the Titan lander was European.
Good points; I really wasn't trying to claim these accomplishments as strictly US. Space exploration has become very international in nature, to the point that I don't really think of any major venture as "our" (in the sense of US) accomplishment, but rather "our" in the sense of our civilization. But there's been a lot of glop in the media about how "we've lost our way, we don't have the right stuff, yadda, yadda. I just wanted to point out that we haven't exactly wasted the last forty years in space.
And, by the way, you Aussies played a pretty important role in the Apollo 11 mission as well... didn't about half the communications run through your antennae?
Listening to an NPR show today while driving, I was interested to hear the interview with a gentleman, currently a professor at some east coast university, who had been high up in the soviet space agency in the mid-60's. He was proud that the Soviets had succeeded in being first into space with Sputnik, and first in manned flight. Apollo 11 success effectively ended the race, but it was a last minute dash to the finish after the Soviets had rubbed our noses in their string of successes.
But it almost didn't happen that way. A perhaps unknown fact is that the U.S. would have beat the Soviets into space were it not for Von Braun's excessive caution. Because there was a booster problem on the last chimp flight, Von Braun overruled Shepard and sent the next flight, on March 21, 1961, unmanned. It was a flawless launch, and Shepard never forgave Von Braun. On April 12, Gagarin launched atop a Soviet Vostok I to become the first human in space. He would have been the first to orbit Earth regardless because Shepard just went up and right back down.
That Soviet success was a win also for Von Braun's former assistant, Helmut Gröttrup, who headed the Soviet engineering team.
Funny but I took the "we" in your post to mean "mankind."
As for the Aussies and the antenna- have you seen the movie "The Dish?" It's really wonderful and quirky.
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