In fact, I would argue the moon landings were a mistake, in that we spent a whole lot of money building a system that did one useless but amazing thing instead of spending less money figuring out how to give ourselves the capability to do lots of useful and amazing things at a reasonable cost.

If Elon Musk wants to pay for a Mars trip I'll cheer him on, but nobody's ever been able to articulate a compelling reason for it. A trillion dollars is a lot of money, and I'd rather see it go toward tax cuts or paying down the national debt.

Driving down costs is not only an issue, it's the primary issue. If we have to pay $10k per kg to get stuff into LEO none of the activities that would support a permanent presence in space are worth doing.

But it's also a lack of will because we don't have a rival as formidable as Russia threatening to beat us to the punch. Well, at least not at the moment. Russia looks more and more like it has the desire to play the role again - the desire, but probably not the ability. And if that's true, there's always China. In fact I wouldn't be totally surprised if China's increasing interest in space were the thing that finally got Americans to Mars.

But failing that, what's going to get us to commit the resources to a risky mission like travelling to Mars? A trip whose only reward is first saying we've been there, and only down the road a few decades the ability to colonize it and mine its natural resources?

The only thing more powerful in the nation's mind than projecting military power is money...and maybe that will be enough to get us there....

http://realitysandwich.com/23226/kubrick_apollo/