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JoshuaZ comments on Why space stopped captivating minds ? - Less Wrong
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The lack of human space exploration really doesn't help in terms of capturing the public's fickle imagination. Sending robots is just not as exciting, even to me. Additionally, NASA's failure to continue to show progress after the huge, dramatic victory of the moon missions was very bad, from a PR perspective. Many people feel that space is over, and that that chapter in humanity's history is closed. Which is very sad, because I think the moon missions were one of the best things we've ever done, as a species.
I strongly agree with the point about lack of dramatic victories. It is hard for people to be excited when most of what we've done is stay in low Earth orbit. At the same time, people don't appreciate though how much progress we've made that's slow and steady. We've reduced the cost of putting things into space, and we've started getting to the point where private companies can do things in space and routinely turn profits, not just for communication satellites, but also for mapping satellites, and in some cases, possibly human space travel. It may well be that we'll return to the dramatic victories once we bring the cost down a bit more.