Where next, Columbus? [Space Technology]

FIFTY YEARS AGO, the famous Saturn V rocket was unveiled ahead of the first human voyages to the Moon. The 1960s may have ended on a grim note for the USA, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and senator Bobby Kennedy, the mire of the Vietnam war, and social unease seemingly endemic, but Nasa's Apollo project was a welcome spark of optimism, and we still find it inspirational today. This year marks another space anniversary, too. It is Nasa's 60th birthday. In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik. Within a decade it evolved from a small research outfit launching monkeys into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises we have ever known. Can the venerable space agency relive its past glories, or is old age catching up with it?