We ended the Space Shuttle program a little over a year ago. We still have space ambitions but most of the interesting and newsworthy stuff is done by robots of one sort or another. We have just landed on Mars with the Curiosity rover. It will be in the news for a long time.
We have the International Space Station, packed with real live humans, orbiting 250 miles up above the earth. The ISS has grown to a size somewhat larger than a football field and is resupplied periodically by unmanned supply rockets. The Russians run a taxi service for moving people out to the ISS and back home again. The ISS is one of the brightest things in the sky when it flies over. It can be much brighter than the moon if the sun hits it right...but it seems that few people bother to look up. I'm a sky watcher so I've seen it and it is an impressive sight...but it is over in about four or five minutes.
I guess we've reached the point where most of the pioneering work is over...at least close to our home planet. Much of the equipment and artifacts from this time are showing up in museums. There was a news item last week about Los Angeles having to cut down 400 trees along a roadway so that the space shuttle can be towed to the local museum.
The Chinese are talking about sending humans on a mission to the moon. That would be goos, I think, but I can't imagine what the cost would be. I wonder if unmanned space exploration is much less expensive than sending humans. The focus would be on robotics and other types of technology rather than life support.
I wonder if any of those space monkeys are still alive. If J. Fred Muggs is still alive at 60 then maybe there are still a couple space monkeys around. We still send animals into space. In February 2010 the Iranians sent a mouse, two turtles and some worms into space on one of their rockets. They survived the trip.
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