This time around it is called Orion. 25 years ago I was dreaming of flying to the stars, the moon, the planets. With something more sophisticated than a rocket. I was dreaming of something more sophisticated than the Space Shuttle. What happened in the last 3 decades. Where is the successor to the Shuttle? What has NASA been doing all this time? It seems incredible that all we have achieved is an Apollo 2.0 and that also only another 10 years from now.
It makes me think that somewhere on the way the public has not been told of the real space program that has been going on in secret. The secret deep space probes that have been sent out year by year. The Deep Space Network of probes that can detect incoming objects the size of a baseball entering our solar system as far as pluto. Technology has not stood still since Apollo. It has advanced in black projects with budgets that are mind-boggling.
All these years the USA has had a unique monopoly in space and human spacefight. The hopes is now that other nations finally catch up and break this monopoly. Europe, China, India and Japan all are out to established manned programs to fly to the moon and mars at some point. Meanwhile the United States rejected any cooperation with any other nation. Why? New technologies will be revealed, new techologies that will make spaceflight as we know it seem like grandmother’s bike. Can’t wait!