Titan, one of Saturn's moons, has an underground ocean
Please, can we now put a reasonable nuclear reactor in space, power a VASIMIR engine (or something equally adequate), and do it with humans instead of robots? We already proved we can do it with machines and who will make first contact with alien life in becoming a really important question. We are not a race of robots.<p>People wonder why the general public lost interest with space exploration, but we need to look no further than all the excitement every six-wheeler is experiencing right now, as they watch their six-wheeled brothers, the daring explorers of Mars.<p>I am an engineer. I can comprehend and I do have the ultimate respect for the genius that allows us to land and operate robots on Mars, but that's the same genius that allowed us to land people on the Moon and, sadly, this is something we don't do anymore because it's too expensive. And we refuse to spend money on that while, at the same time, we fight unnecessary wars against the dictators we financed in the past. There is water ice on the Moon, probably a lot of it. There are minerals, abundant energy, just enough gravity to make industrial processes easy and a high grade vacuum that's the dream of every metallurgist. With these resources, we can become a true spacefaring civilization fit to meet our neighbors from the other islands floating around our sun.<p>We shouldn't do with robots the work of humans.