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Published online 15 July 2009 | Nature 460, 314-315 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460314a
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Shooting for the Moon
The Apollo programme inspired thousands of people to pursue careers in science. Today, they still support human spacefaring — but baulk at the price. Richard Monastersky reports on the results of a Nature poll.
In the heady days after the Apollo 11 lunar landing on 20 July 1969, countless children travelled to the Moon by cupping their hands over their mouths and announcing: "Houston, Tranquility Base, here. The Eagle has landed.
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"The Neurolab experiments, which flew on NASA's space shuttle Columbia in 1998, are regarded as the high point of life-sciences research in space and resulted in 100 publications, according to Joan Vernikos, former director of life sciences at NASA." That was 11 years ago. So it has all been downhill since then, despite the vast sums spent on the ISS? Not surprising perhaps, given that the occupants have their work cut out to feed water themselves.