I'm not sure how much of this is true - Space Travel, but I heard somewhere that our mobile phones have more

computing power than Apollo 11. If this is true, why have we not seen a huge increase in spacetravel/crafts? With this advance in technology why have we not had bigger spacecrafts? Along with the increase in technology full fold over the past 20-30 years why have we not really seen a major development? Why have we not been to the moon again with humans?

Actually a digital watch has more, and computers back then were as big as a large room.

The initial manned space flight programmes were because of the "space race". Once it became obvious that the race was run, the manned space programme was put on a lower pitch, because it cost a huge amount of money.

Also, accidents and disasters (Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1, among others) have increased the need for more caution.

It is not the prohibitive cost of computing power, it is the prohibitive cost of raw materials, man-hours, and fuel. Yes, there is more processing power in a digital watch than went in the voyager space craft, but today's crafts are just as big and bulky because it takes a lot of energy to get into space. And it takes a large craft to sustain all that fuel/energy. And it's not like rocket ships come off an assembly line like cars. Each one is hand-built and unique. Hence all the man-hours.

the makers of phones can't see any profit in space travel.

Partially it is lack of politcal will.

Remember too, that the computer isn't the key component of a spaceship. Despite research, an inexpensive launch vehicle, such as a reusable space plane, has yet to be developed. The rockets that will replace the Space Shuttle are not a big advance over the vehicles that launched Apollo.

The slide rules that the astronauts took with them almost had more computing power than the guidance computer. Most calculations were done the old fashioned way, with slide rule, paper and pencil.

The barrier to space flight is not computation. You might have grown up thinking "technology = computers," but you would be wrong about that. Very little actual computation is actually required. The barrier is the deep gravitational well we happen to be sitting in which requires hundreds of times the spacecraft's own weight in fuel to get out of, regardless of which computers are on board.

Apollo did not require that much computing capacity. What it had was sufficient. We don't see large space craft because building spacecraft is very expensive and there is no place to go worth going with a manned vessel. Mars and the moons of jupiter and Saturn can be explored by robotic probes far more cheaply than manned spacecraft.

It costs a lot of $$. When we had those mean old Russians to out maneuver we had a reason. Now we don't. So we just use the money to murder Iraqis.

space travel may be a true factor shortly.