Any one still give a crap about space?
 

Now I know my own government has kind of abandoned the idea of doing anything major in the cosmos, but I hope some nations are still interested. Wasn't someone working on a space-elevator?

NASA just put two probes into lunar orbit today. And recently launched a new Mars explorer rover, the biggest one since the Viking landers. New Horizons will be approching Pluto in a couple years.

Russia will be adding a new componont to the International Space Station.

China has launched it's own space lab.

And a private group is going to be testing out a new solar sail.

There is always people thinking about Space. Its the forefront of all our Science fiction thus always in the public mind in some way. Once I think we tackle our president out of office or debt we can start doing manned missions again.

They still haven't finished that yet? Jesus christ!

Wasn't there an mission to x-ray the moon being proposed somewhere, and a new ion propulsion engine to be tested too? Or did they get scrapped?

But yeah, there's probably people doing some shit somewhere. I know NASA built a new moon buggy a few years ago, it was on Top Gear. Who knows if it'll ever be used though.

It's actually replacing part of the station.

What so by the time they build it they need to start replacing it? Jesus christ!

Mostly I'm wondering about space colonization/travel. I mean I'm all for probes and rovers, but care far more about developing infrastructure and logistics for retrieving what they find out there. And not having all of humanities eggs in one basket.

Don't NASA and ESA (and JAXA too maybe?) have a long term goal of a manned mission to Mars in the 2030's. I know that a while back (several years now) ESA announced the Aurora -program with this particular goal, but I've since understood that the cost concerns have lead previously mentioned space agencies to pool their resources on this instead of attemping their own seperate programmes.

e: Now that I think about it, I seem to recall the RKA having their own plans for Mars as well. And I doubt it that the CNSA will want to be the only major space agency to not have any goals with Mars in mind.

I think NASA scrapped that plan due to budget cuts

God, I hope not. That would be the biggest waste of money possible short of trying to build a Dyson sphere or something.

Also, while I'm not enthusiastic about budget cuts, I am slightly glad that it's forcing space agencies to reprioritize. I would far rather have them focusing on unmanned missions and things like the Hubble, rather than ludicriously expensive wastes of time like sending a couple of dudes to Mars (looks good, gets put in the history books, accomplishes jack and shit beyond the previous two objectives).

And besides all of this, the private sector is where the real future of space exploration is.