RE: Privitaized Space Exploration

By law, treaty and basic human right, outer space is like the ocean: it belongs to all of us. Ever since its inception, the U.S. space program has been a slow and methodical beast, obsessed with safety and redundancy, with small steps rather than giant leaps. And with tiny crews, or even no crews at all--when it can, NASA loves to send a robot to do a man's job. But where did they ever get the idea that we, the people, wanted it that way? Popular support for the space program springs from one simple fact: we all want to go. Since the earliest days of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, we've been a nation of frustrated astronauts, imprisoned by the gravity of our planet and its bureaucracies alike.