The one mystery about spaceflight we have yet to solve is "why". Why send men into space? Our machines have explored the solar system, probably for less than the cost of a single manned mission to Mars.A lot of people were pushing for a space station before we got to the moon. They knew once we got to the moon people would lose interest. A space station would have been an anchor for keep going. They made a feeble attempt with Skylab afterwards, but that was just a McGyvered tin can.Instead of having space stations and moon bases we can't even get an astronaut into space.
Here is a concept drawing of a space station in 1952 by Werner Von Braun, father of the space program:
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Looks a lot like the station in 2001, doesn't it? Like most things, mankind lags far behind the vision of fiction largely because man is far too busy making war with himself and trying to steal from his brother.
That being said, I thought it was a great movie.
Bit of trivia I've never been able to confirm: were the bizarrely-colored landscapes at the very end of the movie colorized sequences taken from the end of Dr. Strangelove where the B-52 is flying over Russia?