By the way DARTH, thats the best question I have seen in this forum...

I was wondering about that too.

I guess, one reason for it is that after the Cold War the US lost their interest and cut back on the funding.

I believe, that in order to make huge leaps forward, we have to have some kind of incentive to do so.

New ressources would be such a thing.

space isnt cool anymore i guess

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NOT THIS CONSPIRACY! lol

Lack of money and motivation. Unfortunately it seems that for humans it's more important to make all kind of new weaponry to kill other humans than to search and study space...

Because bluntly nobody really cares.

Space exploration was only properly good for propaganda. Commercial companies are only now starting to see potential profits from space and as soon as there is a good market for space tourism or viable markets for resources from space we're going to see a second and even greater boom in the sector.

the problem that's being overcome at this point is how to go their and stay their, that's a little more difficult than rigging up something for little walk around and then back home. also one needs to keep in mind that everything is not always put on display for all to see.

Virigin is focusing primarily on selling tickets to sub-orbital flights for entertainment. In its own way, its a very good business, as ticket prices are expected to drop by 50% over the next 2 years.

The real player is SpaceX, because they actually launched a friggin' rocket into space. Not a namby-pamby airplane, but the kind that only NASA, Russia and few others have ever done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP5gykvTBpM&feature=related

Remember, this is a PRIVATE LAUNCH. No federal involvement. Thats what makes it so incredible....That a company has put the $$$ into space flight.

Here is why Falcon 9 is so important:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

Cost to send 1KG of material to GTO (geostationary transfer orbit): $8,000-$10,000 (based on F9H specifications)

Current cost to send 1KG of material to GTO via NASA: $22,500

That's over a 50% reduction in costs. With such a drop, there will be new applications for space travel...Suddenly, it won't be so expensive. Further refinements in design will drop the price more and more, until it becomes very plausible for some billionaire to chart a trip to Mars. Heck, there are already price quotes on sending people around the moon for a 7-day vacation. When that price becomes reasonable, think about how easy it'll be for someone to say 'why fly around it, when you can land on it?'. Thats when colonization becomes a reality.

A lot of what's already said is why, but other things to consider:

Getting to the moon and getting to anything beyond that, is not just the "next step". It's a huge step. The difference is like the Greeks making a boat to get to Italy, and making a boat to get to Hawaii. They both seem the same. Make something that floats and move people. In reality, at the time of the Greeks that could never have been done.

Second, we have made huge advancements, just not in ways that look huge. Take the F-15 for example. The cool thing about it is how it looks, and how it looks when it fly's. The todays F-15 looks about the same when doing that. But the F-15 of today, has nothing in common with the F-15 that flew in 1972 aside from airframe.

You could take 1 modern F-15, and shoot down 10 F-15's from 1972. All this is due to the advancements we have made in aerospace.

 because energy is too expensive and scarce . to improve space travel or colonise Mars or the Moon or whatever, we need some "magic" energy source like cold fusion for example.

and space tourism??. we dont even know if we´ll be driving cars in the future.