Not sure if I should laugh or cry. The Apollo missions became…ordinary. Within a year of the 1st landing Congress was cutting future missions out of the budget. Even the amazing recovery of Apollo 13 wasn’t enough to keep the interest boosted.
We moved on to Skylab and 4 years after the moon landing, we essentially scrapped our manned program while the shuttle program limped towards disaster.
Politicians and special interest groups hijacked the design process and gave us a launch system that was essentially guaranteed to fail. Both shuttle disasters are directly attributable to the insane decision to go with “reusable” liquid fuel boosters. And when it did fail, the replacement program for the temporary shuttle program was scrapped.
We should have been to Mars and back already. We should have already set up a permanent lunar base. We should have already put up a string of solar collectors for power transmission back to earth. All of this was within our grasp.
Not sure if I should laugh or cry. The Apollo missions became…ordinary. Within a year of the 1st landing Congress was cutting future missions out of the budget. Even the amazing recovery of Apollo 13 wasn’t enough to keep the interest boosted.
We moved on to Skylab and 4 years after the moon landing, we essentially scrapped our manned program while the shuttle program limped towards disaster.
Politicians and special interest groups hijacked the design process and gave us a launch system that was essentially guaranteed to fail. Both shuttle disasters are directly attributable to the insane decision to go with “reusable” liquid fuel boosters. And when it did fail, the replacement program for the temporary shuttle program was scrapped.
We should have been to Mars and back already. We should have already set up a permanent lunar base. We should have already put up a string of solar collectors for power transmission back to earth. All of this was within our grasp.