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SMELL THE FUTURE: Dennis Wingo has an article on SpaceRef this week, in which he recaps previous abortive attempts at exploration and compares them to NASA’s ongoing post-Apollo lack of focus and direction.

Much of this history lesson will be familiar to Mars Society members and other readers of the Zubrin books. But he does sum up nicely our place on the road and the path we should not take. And while he sees NASA as performing a critical role in the future of space, he fully acknowledges that this role must be limited to a few areas, and scaled back in others, in favor of commercial development.

(I’d question the bit about Star Trek having a positive view of the future, however. I don’t care for military-collectivist utopias, myself.)