Why does humanity advance so slowly when it comes to space travel?

Question

I would think after almost 40 years they'd have a resort on the moon or least talking about it, it seems like it won't happen during my lifetime

Answer 1

Money. People don't want to spend the money. We went to the Moon, first for bragging rights. We went back for science. But we pretty know what's up there now. So nobody (except perhaps for a few scientists) sees any scientific reason for going again.

Let's say it costs half a billion dollars to put a man on the moon for a couple of days. To do that you have to supply food, water, air, power... everything he needs... for two days. When that's gone, he has to come back.

Only a couple billionaires have made it to the space station. We might have to wait for trillionaires before people are spending a weekend on the moon.

Some say they would rather the money be spent on research... finding cures for disease... methods of growing food to feed the over-population of the world.

Almost every advance in technology or medicine in the last eighty years has been sparked by so-called "war mongers" or "scientific geeks." That's because research for these fields is paid for by the government. People would rather spend their money on fuel (to make unnecessary trips) for their gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups (which they don't need), their $700,000-$2,000,000 mansions (they don't need) at terms that are fiscally insane for absolutely no other reason than "I want."

So advances in agriculture, medicine, technology are left to the military and science... and the people complain about that.

Answer 2

WHAT!!!!!!????? where have you been?

http://www.galacticsuite.com/
expected to open 2012
price 4 million $
something like a 15 week spa vacation / training for space on a tropical island and a 3 night stay in orbit. 15 sunsets a day

http://www.virgingalactic.com/flash.html
first flight expected 2009
price $200,000
3 day training camp for zero G environments



over all, I think SAFETY was the major reason we haven't done it before..... no one wants to be reliable....

cost was the second issue.....
I mean really. do you want to be one of the first to spend 4 million to stay 3 nights in space?

I'll let the extreme millionaires pave the way and hopefully bring down the prices as long as there are no "incidents"

3rd..... I think the governments held onto space for security reasons. We where in the middle of the cold war when space tourism was considered. Space was a great location for strategic weapons arrays and I don't think they wanted people near them..... ever hear of "star wars"?? I mean the REAL deal not the movie.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/22/documents/starwars.speech/

(we've actually done really well over all if you ask me.
pluto is 6 billion miles away and we have a ship called voyager 1 almost 4 billion miles past pluto.
covering 10 billion miles of space seems pretty nice to me.
with that distance, we've practically gone from one side of our solar system to the other

distance beyond that becomes a waiting game since we cannot travel ANY where near the speed of light.

new horizons is the newest ship on its way to pluto as we speak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NewHorizons2007-08-30.jpg


MY question is why hasn't humanity advanced AWAY from religion? it is the 21st century and all.

Answer 3

With todays technology there is nowhere in the solar system worth visiting. There are no worlds that can be colonized, there are no possible resources to be exploited that would pay for the cost of mining them. With the advances possible in another hundred years, who knows.

Even with technology we can realistically imagine, the interstellar gulf is too great. Of course people one hundred years ago wouldn't be able to imagine electronics.. Who knows what advances a century or two will bring. But right now the best energy source we can imagine would be matter-antimatter conversion. And we haven't a clue how to build antimatter. Much less contain it. Or use it.

Answer 4

Space is pretty much the final solution for the human race. It is not easy as it looks. There are many factors. The world has been developing ways to go to space cheaply and reliably. As of today, we don't have enough brains in this world to tackle these issues and politics can come into the equation. I hope to be alive when every person in this world is fluent in advanced mathematics and physics. Then I beleive we have much hope expanding our horizions into the vastness of space. One good thing to think about is our muscles will die given our length of time spent in space and absence of true gravity. Imagine exercising every important muscle in your body in order to be able to walk on earth again. However, Earth is perhaps the only home we are capable of living in.

Answer 5

Well, the main reason is our democracy.... we advanced so quickly in the 60's because a potential enemy was developing it fast, and we wanted to beat them. After we landed on the moon, and the public lost interest, (and noting the cost of things), well, anyone in favor of enhancing the space agency when we had hungry, homeless people were voted out of office - and NASA suffered.
If you can spark the interest of the people, and if the costs can be justified - we'd start to progress again... I hope it happens.

Answer 6

We're stuck using chemical rockets. As has been demonstrated, a chemical rocket can get a few guys to the Moon, but it's very, very expensive.

What we need is development of a new propulsion system with better sources of energy---an atomic-powered rocket, or a matter-antimatter rocket, or a black-hole powered rocket. We can imagine such things, but they are far from being practical. They may require centuries of engineering development.

Answer 7

Its seems futile to me. We cant travel at the speed of light anyway, So whats the point. We will never ever even be able to get to the next star let alone another Galaxy. The only way we will ever be able to visit another Galaxy is thru spiritual travel. So that brings up the other dimension. Think about another galaxy far far away, then will yourself to be there. Thats what it will be like. cool eh?

Answer 8

It takes a lot of money for the technology needed for space travel.

Answer 9

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to bring that much material up to the moon? Why don't we save that task for when we've overcome world hunger and stopped squabbling over oil?

Answer 10

It's enormously expensive, it's a long term investment, and there aren't "sure thing" profits. People with money are more interested in a quicker return on investment.