The rapid acceleration of civil space activities can be dated from the Soviet launch of Sputnik and its successor artificial Earth satellites, and the US response, in its Apollo programme, to the national security threat that this posed. For the 20 years since men visited the Moon the civil space area has seen continued success in spacecraft exploration of the Solar System, the use of satellites to observe the Earth and assist in communications, and the continued visiting of low-Earth orbit by a small number of people. But it has also been marked by the inability of its leaders to convince the public that other things are worth doing, especially considering the enormous public cost of doing almost anything in space.