China's Chang'e 5 lunar test vehicle captures amazing Earth + Moon image.

India has a Mars orbiter. Since America blew all its resources on wars, other nations will have to pick up the slack.

http://t.space.com/all/23203-india-mars-orbiter-mission-photos#1

That would be like saying the tide pool on which we first crawled on to land is the only one we would ever know.

Maybe, but America can not even launch a garbage pickup and food delivery rocket these days.

And you're over-generalizing a rocket failure that happened with one contractor because of a 40-year-old Russian rocket engine.

SpaceX (not Orbital Sciences, the one whose rocket failed) is steadily advancing the technology and reducing the cost of spaceflight. They have about a dozen flights scheduled over the next year, and most of them will provide opportunities to land a first stage for reuse. If they succeed, which they likely will on at least one of those flights, they will be able to gradually reduce the cost down to a tenth of what it is right now over two or three years.

Mars is more or less inevitable. Longer term, there's no fundamental barrier to filling the solar system with humanity. Even floating cities in gas giant atmospheres are technologically possible, although that's centuries away.

There was a lot of irrational enthusiasm during Apollo that thought everything would just automatically leapfrog to new heights beyond the Moon, but now there's irrational pessimism because of the "hangover" decades after the end of Apollo. Also, people don't pay attention to developments in this area, but I do, so trust me - you'll be seeing humans going places over the next decade.

date has gone to 10 miles a second....a fraction of the speed required to ever even think about colonizing Mars, and living in a tent outside of which you instantly die is not colonization.

Time and distance, it will take a theoretical revolution in travel to make it happen....not in our lifetime.

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but.......

Current technology allows roughly 9-month transits every 2 years or so when orbits align. You need heavy shielding when you leave the Earth's magnetosphere, but that's not a problem if you radically reduce the cost per kilogram of spaceflight (as I've said SpaceX is on the verge of doing). Also not as big a deal if you have propellant depots already in space. Trust me - the numbers have been worked out by smarter people than I.

But next technological steps are on the horizon that would allow for much more frequent trips with transit times of about five weeks: VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulsive Magnetoplasma Rocket). Testbeds already exist, and a scale demonstrator thruster will be tested on the space station next year if I'm not mistaken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

For manned interplanetary travel, VASIMR would need a large space-rated nuclear reactor considerably larger than have yet been deployed, but not to any absurd degree. And certainly within range if this happens:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/

(according to David Gilmour, who, I'm sure, has seen it............ :| )

China's government is ludicrous, but not that ludicrous.

eh... who knows or cares. soon, china will claim the moon for its own and we will have to ask if we can go back...

sP

And we've got SpaceX.

Under its terms, they cannot legally claim the moon for themselves; it is essentially international open territory.

the moment any country is in a practical position to violate it advantageously. Such are the realities of economically significant frontiers.