is always going to be problematic.
The fact that we haven't been back to the Moon in more than 45 years is a tribute to that. The fact that we no longer operate a Space Shuttle, and apparently have no plans whatsoever to build new ones is beyond sad. I recently read that despite Trump's pretension that we'll return to the Moon, a planned Moon Rover has been cancelled.
Space Tourism, for profit, has the possibility of actually getting us back into space permanently.
45 years. That means no one, with rare exceptions, under the age of 50 can remember the last time we landed men there. Two generations have grown up since then.
I'm 69, so I recall very well the space program, the Mercury 7, the very first sub-orbital flights, JFK's commitment to go to the Moon and return a man safely within the decade. It was an exciting, heady time. I also remember a lot of criticism of the space program, that we shouldn't be spending any money for that so long as any citizen went hungry. Well, people here are still going hungry, still have inadequate health care, but we never spent erstwhile space program money on those things.
Here's another way to think about it: Imagine what kind of cars we'd be driving if they'd only ever been government funded.