There've been 100 shuttle flights. Mir became the first Soviet product in history to exceed its warranty, bless its scattered shards. At long last an international space station is a-building. But none of these has flown much higher than Major Gagarin did 40 years ago. The crew of Apollo 17 were the last people ever to see the entire Earth at once . . .
Space is a better investment than real estate and oil combined.
The smart money's beginning to figure that out, and the tide has finally started to turn. In 1997, for the first time ever, there were more commercial launches than government ones. Two thousand satellites will go up in the next 10 years. NASA's finally found an identity it can sell to Congress, and is energetically exploring the solar system with unmanned probes, simpler and cheaper than spaceships. Priceless data are pouring in.