Peter Lucas: U.S. program lost in space

Lowell Sun ^ | 12/27/13 | Peter Lucas

[luke1825]

There used to be Americans up there.

The thought came to me on a dark, predawn morning when I looked out the cold window at the bright and shining moon.

The Chinese have landed.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade," President John F. Kennedy said in 1962 when he launched the Apollo moon program, "and do other things, not because they are easy, because they are hard." He called it "the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history." And so it was.

What happened? We used to "own" the moon. What happened to the Americans? Where did the American astronauts go?

Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/peterlucas/ci_24801035/peter-lucas-u-s-program-lost-space#ixzz2ohMMe8xk

[null and void]

True. The first European to set foot in the New World (and make it stick) spoke Italian.

Lots of Italian speaking countries in the western hemisphere to this day, no?

[Yo-Yo]

Yessir, SpaceX absolutely operates both gummit and private. The part that launches privately manufactured communications satellites are private, and nobody disputes that. Private communications satellites have been a money making business for 30 years.

We were talking about spacefilght specifically, and so far Scaled Composites and Virgin Galatic haven't made a spaceflight yet, just high altitude thrill rides. SpaceX wouldn't be making a capsule if it wasn't being paid to do so by a government initiated contract.

I'm still waiting for the Pan American shuttle flight to the Hilton Space Hotel I was promised in 1968.

[RKV]

Nobody told you that you’d have to be a billionaire to afford the Hilton in space? Qu’elle domage!

[Ramius]

Exactly. The next time an American walks on the moon he’s going to be asked for a passport, by someone speaking Chinese.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Cut the Chicoms a little slack. It was not easy to calculate the right amount of black powder to soft land a probe on the moon.