Yes. All of the above. Anything that gets us out there, and fast.
It boggles my mind how quickly we've advanced in communications technology versus how we've pretty much been spinning our wheels (HA!) in regards to transportation technology. I'm not expecting jet packs, here, but we should have at least had a lab on the moon by now.

Government funding. I mean out government wastes so much money on things, take that and put it to NASA and we will be on Mars in a no time and have colonies on the Moon even sooner.

Agreed. How do we fund space exploration? Any way we can. Let the rich people toss their money in the hat along side the governments. Fund some start ups using large groups of less wealthy investors. Sell advertising. Then hold a bake sale (mmmmmmm, apple pie). And anything else you can think of.

Whatever it takes to get us off this rock.

Fuck yes we should. Throw money at it. It should be a game, you walk up to a booth, pick up a couple stacks of $100 bills and throw them wherever you want and NASA gets it.

Also more government funding plus other joint space ventures ftw.

@Miranda Kali: We should have had a lab on the Moon about 30 years ago. Clarke's vision of 2001 would not have been so far-fetched if NASA had followed Von Braun's Earth Orbit Rendezvous approach to getting to the moon. That would have required a space station as a place to assemble ships to go to the Moon. We would have already had a working space station and then could have set up more-or-less regular trips to the Moon. But in the interest of speed and economy, NASA went Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, and while it worked, once the enthusiasm for Lunar missions went cold, there was no stepping stone left behind. Skylab was meant to fill that gap, but we all know how that turned out.

Forget the government. It's going to have to be private investors and small group efforts.

Seriously, why don't we have a spaceplane by now? I'm stull chuffed over the Delta clipper going mothball:

[en.wikipedia.org]

Go Blue Origin!

A lottery. People will throw money away by the handful if they think they will get rich, so start a national lottery game. Just don't tell anyone it's for space exploration -- they'll balk.

We would not need to raise taxes to multiply NASA's budget. A little bit less foreign aid to despotic regimes, a little bit less bureaucracy and waste in our numerous social programs, and the realization that the commercial use of the new technologies developed will result in windfall tax revenues that would far exceed whatever pittance we put in. Some of this investment should go toward private sector incentives and performance driven competition. This is already being done, but on a tiny scale.

Back in the 60s, when we first put a man on the moon, we couldn't spend enough on the space program. And, surprise, we managed to accomplish fantastic things. It's time to make space exploration a priority once again.

Me too. Let the Government and the Richies deal with it, especially in the case of space colonies. Let the rich declare autonomy, and MS WARS!

Tax and spend, baby. Take and spend! Whoohoo.

Really. I'm not joking. Space exploration is just the sort of infrastructure pump priming that Keynes would advocate.

I work at one of the centers. I have some friends involved in a joint project. I think it would move things along if NASA was part of an international project where they were not in charge. The feeling I get is that NASA is monolythic and bureocratic whereas the other partners tend to be much quicker on their feet (efficient).

Space Scout Cookies!

Other: With land. Deglobalize the moon. Anyone who manages to make a colony there earns the land surrounding it, as well as mineral rights. However, it still falls under the governance of the UN, and any laws that apply to earth-nations will apply to moon-nations/companies.

I'd rather see Coke, McDonalds, VISA, et al with prominent sponsorship of space travel/exploration than branding the Olympics for the only real evil empire on the planet, China...

@Ghede:

Oh man, Selene Land Grab.

Pro: No natives to be displaced/opressed/murdered.

Con: Shoddy home-built rockets crashing all over the place.

One word.

NASA-CAR!

National (or even International) lottery. Experience with state lotteries has shown that people will put money in the hopes of beating the ginormous odds.

it wont happen till we kill the earth enough that it has to happen. we like to put stuff off till its to late. thats human nature.

The problem has always been small mindedness. I remember (jezz am i old) when Sputnik happened, and we were going to train every kid to be a rocket scientist. Instead, our high school got a football team. And this was in an area where aerospace was the major employer.

Then Kennedy proposed the Apollo to distract from Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, but it was never thought through as a first step in a comprehensive program. It was a stunt.

LBJ pumped money into NASA, because it was in Houston, in his home state.

Then Nixon gutted the shuttle, cut the piloted first stage and delayed it until it was obsolete on launch. Reagan diverted a lot of money to the Star Wars program, excuse me, missile defense, which has wasted enough money to build a space elevator, and a prospecting trip to the Asteroid belt, probably

The Dems, Carter and Clinton were better on science, but never seemed to get space. I suspect the Bush Mars plan is yet another Texas boondoggle. Alas.

But the numbers are starting to look good for private space programs, as they are for alt/energy, and a few other things, so i have hope.

As John W. Campbell famously said, "When it's time to railroad, you railroad."

It is getting to be "The Man that Sold the Moon" time

This is probably a contraversial idea, but here goes...

What's really needed is a large international non-combat war. During the years of the cold-war, despite much fear, science and technology advanced far faster than at any other stage in human history, but compared to the second fastest (World War II)comparetively little bloodshed.

To get a Government off its arse to spend money on such things as an important part of the budget and not just a token award to look like it supports its sciences, it really has to believe that it is an essential thing to do in order to stay on top.

There was a short story once (afraid I can't remember the author or the title) about an alien menace that was manufactured in order for people to believe there was this major threat approaching. The result - human society advanced immensly with no bloodshed.

Fear does a lot to spur people on.

This is en economic problem.
All economic problems can be solved by lowering taxes.
therefore lowering taxes will fund spaceflight.

Though come to think of it numerous primitive societies with no taxes at all somehow failed to conquer space (as far as I know. Maybe there are bushmen on Mars, shooting down the odd space probe for fun).

Triple it? Increase it fifty-fold, then we're talking.

I think COTS is the way to go. Just a little more cash into companies to get them up to space and a lot less time spent on the pedigree of your screws.

I tend to think that it's about spending money in the right places and changing the right sort of things.

COTS is a good step, because it removes NASA from the equation.... but it's not nearly good enough. The existing contractors get the same old contracts they used to. If NASA were forced to buy from the lowest bidder on the open market, it might result in some good changes.

Or enable NASA to create an assured market for things. Part of what makes current hardware so expensive is that nobody is building them on an automated assembly line. Even expendable boosters wouldn't be so bad if we were making them in bulk.... but just about everybody who might have money has been burned by space markets that don't pan out.

And part of it is just regulation. The legal framework for what the status of my lunar homestead, were I to be able to make a lunar homestead, is a little vague.

The only way the government was gung-ho for the space program in the 1960s was the threat of communists on the moon. The only way for humankind to advance toward the stars is through private industry. Companies like SpaceX are developing launch systems that cost a fraction of what's available now (Atlas and Delta rockets). Virgin Galactic will (hopefully) soon be carrying civilians into space on a regular basis. Competitions like the Google Lunar Xprize are making more and more people aware of commercial spaceflight as an attainable goal. We just need more (rich) people to get excited about space so they invest in these companies.

@Seth L: I don't really care about home made rockets crashing into the moon or Mars. What worries me is when someone mines a whole bunch of stuff, and ships it back to earth. You think an oil tanker crash is bad? Imagine an oil tanker hurtling towards the surface at severe speeds. Hits the ground, you lose a city. Hits the ocean, you lose dozens.

I know this will be un-popular, but SHOULD we be furthering space exploration. Yes, I ma here because I am fascinated with the thought of space travel and other Sci-Fi subjects, but realistically we have bigger fish to fry here, on Earth.

When we, as a nation and a planet, have beaten global warming, poverty, hunger, and war is when we should look to the starts. Until then, we should be focusing on making this planet better.

@cmowire: A spaceship with all the parts made by the lowest bidder? When do we leave?

@Bernie530: If everything's perfect here, we won't want to leave!

The space program(s) should sell public shares. Think of all the useful things that came out of the space program as total side benefits, like Velcro! Shouldn't there be more things to come like that? Invest in the space program, and profit off the side benefits.

International efforts are the only practical approach for human spaceflight, but there is no way to internationalize the Vision for Space Exploration, and the Constellation system is simultaneously obsolete and unaffordable. There is no rationale for abandoning the Shuttle and ISS just as they are becoming productive.