Last fall, in an essay titled "Innovation Starvation," sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson lamented the decline of the American space program. He recalled the awe and wonder he felt growing up, sitting in front of grainy black-and-white images of the Gemini missions. And he explained the great disappointment he felt at witnessing the final Space Shuttle launch. To him, NASA's move away from manned space exploration represented something larger, what he called "our far broader inability as a society to execute on the big stuff." Raised on mid-twentieth century techno-optimism, he grew up with big expectations for the future: space stations and vacations on Mars. Not only had those dreams failed to materialize, he said, but no one seemed to be dreaming them anymore.
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