You miss the point. NASA (and others, this isn't just about NASA) will buy flights to LEO for its people and stuff, instead of having contractors build systems for itself...and go on and do its exploration from there.

"An additional point, why does it have to be the United States? Why can the ESA, Russia, China or India do the space wow for a while?"

"He hated the idea of astronauts becoming delivery boys in space, thought it was too stagnant a goal and wouldn't push us further into space exploration. "

First, 'The Space Program' is a fuzzy term that means what people want it to mean. There's no line item in the US budget called 'The Space Program.'

I surrender...!

Yep, I often wondered what might've come of that, too...

"Isaac Asmiov approves."

For a planet orbiting the yellow G-class Alpha Centauri A at an Earth-comfortable distance (which would be pretty much the same as our distance from the Sun), Alpha Centauri B (a cooler, smaller orange K-class star) is also orbiting A at about a Sun-Saturn distance, and contributing little to the nighttime sky.

What, you've never seen real women with silicone parts...?

I'm guessing they don't have the gag reflex...!

Hell, I miss the old SciFi channel...

"The cold war is over. "

No.

Robert Zubrin (literally) speaks for himself, here:

"Mining the Sky" by John S. Lewis (1996) comes immediately to mind.

Starlionblue, how much more are you willing to pay (and remember, NASA, like any government agency, uses other people's money) for the development of payloads worthy of an HLV?

When was any exploring society ever 'ready' culturally...?

And understand that even as high as it is, Olympus Mons has a very gentle slope, and its peak is almost out of what little atmosphere Mars has.

To PistachioWildebeest: Amen.

That's a desirable thing, but not one I'd try to sell to the public (except geeks like us that already get it). I can already hear the inevitable; "Well, we should use 'all that money' to try to prevent/fix problems that might threaten us, instead."