> I'm hopeful that ... our desire to become a space faring civilization will reinvigorate the passion of our species. But don't we need that passion (and hope)

> I'm hopeful that ... our desire to become a space faring civilization will reinvigorate the passion of our species. But don't we need that passion (and hope) before we can become a space faring civilization? We kind of had that space-faring passion back in the 60s when the US/NASA did the Apollo program - at that point the general feeling was that the government was capable of doing good things. That general feeling has been gone for a while now and has been replaced with a general distrust of institutions like government. To some extent it seems like you need some level of hope before you can trust.