Why not?

To paraphrase Robert Kennedy

There are those who look at the world the way it is, and ask why... I dream of the way the world could be, and ask why not?

Why not conquer energy and space, which will raise the level of civilization?  What are people afraid of?

Update:

I wonder how many people knew about the Nerva rocket developed in the Apollo Era?   I didn't, until I started writing about space on this blog.  I grew up during the Apollo Era, so it is probably likely that I had heard about it, but had forgotten.  Even now, it seems far fetched.  The significance is that the Saturn V rocket's payload could be increased to 340,000 pounds.  This kind of payload could have been very useful for ambitious missions.  It appears that's why the system was scrapped.

Bad decision.  It need not have resulted in a Mars mission at that time.  A moonbase would have sufficed, and could have been constructed with that kind of capability available with the nuclear Saturn V.  With what we now know about water being on the moon, the decision now appears to have been very short sighted.

But that is "water under the bridge".  We have moved on.

Besides, the anti nukes would have grounded the Nerva rocket many years ago.

How to go forward now?  Eventually, if you had a moonbase, you could process fissionable ores on the moon.  But that is way off into the future.  A way forward could be to enable the development of something capable enough and cheap enough to be used in the near future.

I've explored this idea a little already.  I'll make this a sidebar entry, with a new label "Why not a Moonbase?"