What would be the best way to encourage interest in space?

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I am not certain of this, but being born in the 1980's I had noticed that more people then were interested in space travel than there are today. Why is this? Is it due to the Columbia accident? Crappy sci-fi shows of the first decade of this millennium? What?

I would really like to see the commercialization of space. Having tourism of Mars, cruises around the solar system and the like. Perhaps useful materials can be mined from asteroids, moons, and planets. Maybe larger vessels can be constructed in space and un-spent fuel loaded aboard for interstellar generation-ships. It would be nice if space exploration would continue. Manned space exploration and not just robots and remote controlled vehicles.

Has demand for such things actually decrease over the last decade as I have perceived in person? If so, then why? How can demand be increased again so that we might actually get to do cool things again?

Oy. What a topic.

I see it too. I would like to say, as gently as I can, from my perspective American social leadership is actively discouraging curiosity and inquisitiveness.

I'm trying to answer this before anyone else does. It is not purely a religious phenomenon, and I dont mean to suggest that it is. However it is a lot of what worries those of us that are not religious.

When people get taught things like "you dont need to know that" or "its dangerous to study system x(lets say communism as a valid example), they stop thinking, stop wondering, stop dreaming. Forgive me for being blunt here, but "god designed it and it is beyond our ability to know" is a prime example of that.

Also telling people to be content with the role that they have been assigned is bad.

The endless expansion of knowledge is critical to fostering curiosity.

I have a favourite saying that I think is applicable. "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." I dont know who said it first, but its true, isnt it? People must be encouraged to be curious about everything.

Mostly money.

^ Agree to a certain point, but then look at my lifetime, (Sand do the same for yours and it is even more incredible). 1969 Age 4 I was taken to the UK from New Zealand by ship because it was far cheaper than flying, the same year man lands on the moon (foil hatters SHUT UP), same year Dad who stayed in NZ to fulfil a work contract has to call us using the Trunk call system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscriber_trunk_dialling. Jump forward 5 years and we have the space shuttle testing on the back of a Boeing 747, move forward a couple of years and the kids tv program I used to watch, 'Blue Peter' awards a kid, a prize for her 'year 2000' invention of a completely flat, oblong, TV screen with added ability to talk to the tv host. When I was at school we received the first portable calculators, they were so expensive that they were bolted to the bench and the room was renamed the 'Maths Lab'. When I left school in '81 'computer tech' involved learning machine code, and sending your calculations off to the local Uni for computation. There are so many examples to show how technology has improved in my lifetime, but I think this sums it up, I once considered Pong, remarkable, in fact so remarkable that I was the envy of the street for having ithttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPkUvfL8T1

Personally I think that progress has moved ahead in line with reasonable expectations. As the great man (Douglas Adams) once said "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space" and this is the problem, to explore the universe beyond orbiting this planet and landing upon the moon, is going to take a monumentally massive leap in technology. The starting point for this is the international space station, which in comparison to Mir and Skylab is like comparing the horse and cart, to a modern Land Cruiser.

Money.

First, we need a de-politicalization and de-militarization of space.

Right now getting up there really requires the blessing of government and military bodies. Never mind that the UN thinks everything up there should be their jurisdiction.

Frankly, that has to end. Yes, we have to work together for certain safety issues, but all that's been done creates barriers to enterprises that want to exploit space development for profit. If someone wanted to build an orbital space platform capable of being populated by 2,000 people in 20 years, how are we discouraging them from pursuing that?

Second, we need to NOT subsidize space research but likewise not tax or seize the fruit of that research. You want to make your own nation and yourself as king? Fine. Shoot yourself up onto Mars, start a colony, and you can be king. Your investment. Your reward. If every person wanting to reach for the stars expects that government should pay for it, it will only happen if government wants to foot the bill, but that also means government will expect to control and own whatever is found or developed.

I think you've hit the nail on the head already here, commercializing the space industry i think would be one of the only ways to get people interested. Maybe the problem is that people are interested in things like this when they can actually go and visit it, imagine the interest people would show in simply going to the moon and back. Fair enough people would become bored with it after a while but there's so much out there to go and visit the Jupiter cruise for example orbiting Io and watching sulfur erupt from its surface, or maybe even floating in the methane seas of Saturn's Titan the only moon with a substantial atmosphere. Of course actually doing this in the real would with current technology would be pretty much impossible, it would take a long time and allot of interest which probably isn't there in the first place.

The only way to get the interest of the commercial world is the promise of profit, maybe mining asteroids like you suggested would be a way of getting industries out there. As far as i know there's no shortage of Iron in the world so maybe something like gold mining would be of interest to companies, but would mining gold on asteroids actually bring in more money than what is spent on getting the equipment out there in the first place. Maybe the unique selling point of this gold would be that it's "space gold" and people would spend just that little bit more on owning jewelry mined from another world.

hmph, how do you define "world" here? <.< (in regards to the last sentence of the last poster)

In such a case, "world" means a circle of society that operates largely as a self-contained environment.

The "commercial world" needs economic incentives to justify making a choice.

The "political world" bases many choices on political self-interest.

Etc.

You can't tell the "commercial world" to do something because it is morally just or politically sound. To them, turning a profit is the highest priority.

...discover oil there...

honestly, one of the sad facts of the 'space race' was that it was a race. Once we got there, most people went 'oh...how many victory laps do we need?' The rest of the developments since then have been mundane 'space trukkin' and a tiny space station.

Two things may help -

1) as mentioned, commercialization. When you're the government, there's no need to turn a profit, so there's no need to control costs... If we get some people to provide access to space, that will help.

2) The Chinese - they're going to the moon. They've certainly got the money, and they've been going much faster on space capsules (but then we and the Russians solved most of the technical hurdles), so the race may be back on...

whatever works...

Maybe when they send new astronauts to the moon, it will renew interest in space travel. Current generations have never seen a moon landing. If the Consellation Program doesn't get cancelled, I think it's likely that will eventually reignite the interest they had in the late 60's early 70's. But I'm not entirely sure about this.

I propose a three step plan.
1) Cut costs of launch to orbit by at least a factor 100.
2) Develop fuel efficient drives, so that reaction mass doesn't make up 90% or more of the mass of your vessel. VASIMIR (Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket) looks interesting.
3) Find a way to protect the crew from radiation.

If the cost of getting to orbit weren't so high, there would be a lot more incentive for working on the rest. Until then there's little point to manned exploration. If this is about jobs to be done, it makes more sense to develop robots to be more autonomous and let them do whatever it is you want. That technology appears to be progressing much faster than the technology you need to make manned space flight pay.

Fat chance. Most of the money for space projects is raised by governments through taxation.

ruveyn

Increase taxation to 100% of income and redistribute the wealth ... the extreme end of Obamanomics. j/k...

Since income is declining for the average guy this doesn't seem viable.Space is about the most uninhabitable environment one can imagine. Perhaps a project to ship all the Republicans to Mars with George W. Bush at the top of the list could inspire donations.

By the way, I've just revived an earlier thread of mine on that topic if you're interested:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/posts108204-start45.html.