A rather inane AP story ran today, questioning whether the romance of space has worn off of Americans. While reporter Ted Anthony’s answer measuring pop culture impact isn’t the way I would gauge interest, the question does bear asking.

I think America had big plans for our space program and those plans were never fulfilled. Sure, the first moon landing was a momentous occasion but humans last visited the moon December 1972. While that was exciting while it lasted, it didn’t continue. We cheered the astronauts’ successes and dreamed of getting our chance.

We’ve had the pioneers. Now when do the settlers get to go?

What we had in the meantime was the space shuttle. The shuttle’s appeals to us as it looks like a plane, and in our minds we hold out hope that spaceflight is as simple as hopping a plane. Even then, the shuttle is nothing more than a 4 billion dollar dump truck, unable to rise above low-earth orbit. It’s space on training wheels. Woo hoo.

If spaceflight is to be exciting again, people need to be able to see themselves as astronauts. In the last 40 years, the closest the general populace has gotten to spaceflight has been private enterprise, with the development of Spaceship One. With that milestone achieved, armchair astronauts could revive their dream. For the vast majority of us, though, spaceflight will remain just a dream, and a dream that can never be fulfilled tends to lose its appeal.