NASA has bold plans to explore the final frontier - again.
AS YOU READ THIS, astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS) are circling the earth every 90 minutes. NASA is busily preparing to relaunch the space shuttle fleet. And more than a dozen robotic NASA spacecrafts are exploring our neighborhood in the Milky Way: Cassini-Huygens spacecraft photographing Saturn's moons, the rovers poking around Mars, and the venerable Voyagers investigating the edge of our solar system. Important stuff, to be sure. But what about all that new-millennium, gee-whiz space exploration that seemed so promising when an astronaut was hitting a golf ball on the moon decades ago? Whatever happened to a future of Capt. James T. Kirk, phasers set on stun, and humans living on the moon?

Where, exactly, is the U.S. space program heading?

Since 1972, hundreds of people have
been to space, but no one has gone beyond orbiting Earth, about 200 miles from our planet. NASA is now making committed moves to get earthlings beyond that realm again. Commercial companies and nonprofits also are looking to stake claims in a new era of exploring the final frontier.

If you listen to the enthusiasts and scientists who relish defying gravity, that's just the beginning. Our future in the cosmos could include humans plasma-rocketing to Mars, NASA vehicles dodging space elevators that rise 62,000 miles high, human colonies on the moon that harvest oxygen from rocks, and giant sails coasting on sunlight to Pluto.­ Here are some of these plans.

THE MOON ROCKS