[Prime Choice]

Hopefuly, we can recapture the glory days and spiirit of Apollo. Things were run better then.

Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee would beg to differ. If things had truly been "run better" back then, those three men wouldn't have been incinerated in the command module on the launchpad.

[NCC-1701]

You are correct about Apollo 1. NASA, as well as North American Rockwell shoulders the bulk of the blame for that tragedy. After that tragedy, things tightened up and became better run. Up to the flight of Apollo 13. If the crew of Apollo 13 had died as a result of what happened 34 years ago today, that would have killed NASA. As it was, through prayer, luck, and a ballet of interconnected disciplines, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert made it back alive. I was talking about the overall successes of NASA then. Sure there were deaths along the way, no entity is safe from that. NASA has been, IMHO, one of the few things this country has had that has been more of a positive than a negative. It cost a boatload of bucks to put Apollo 11 on the moon, but compare that to the failed endeavour in Vietnam which up to that point cost 4 - 5 times the amount. If asked where I wanted my money to go, it would be NASA.