A Transforming Scenario: The New Space Agenda

Abstract

I believe that most coevals of my generation, the so-called ‘baby-boom’ generation, living as teenagers in the 1960s, have imaginedthat at the dawn of the 21st century we were witnessing a very lively space flight era, with manned space stations and humancolonies on the Moon and even on Mars. Every teenager at that time, witnessing the ‘live transmission’ of men walking onthe Moon, has certainly dreamed of this possibility, and Kubrik’s and Arthur Clarke’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey (produced in 1968)represented the incarnation of this hopeful future. But later, in the 1990s, as mature adults, the idea came to those mindsthat the Earth seemed to have stood still – at least with regard to space activities. What happened?