A Failure of Nerve

I saw the article and it looked interesting, cool photos of Titan, and this was presented as a new thing, and they were very cool pictures of Titan, which, being a moon of Saturn, is seriously far away. But then I noticed that it was from 2005.
In some ways we are making great scientific advances. Solar energy and wind energy are just about to the point where they can satisfy all of our energy needs, Finland has plans to switch to all electric cars in the next few years, we have 3-D printers that can build whole houses, computers are getting very close to artificial intelligence, and robots can do gymnastics and dance. (google Boston Dynamics – they’ve got video that will knock your socks off.)
But a space shot from 2005 is still a big deal.
I don’t know why we’re not doing more in space. We’re doing plenty with telescopes, and the space station is still chugging along, but it looks like the first colonies on Mars might be private. Because the governments of Earth are all short-sighted, corrupt, unimaginative, and cowardly.