It was forty years ago that otherwise conservative NASA took its shot at the moon. False CIA intelligence and a delay in the manufacture of the lunar module inspired the Apollo 8 mission, which originally wasn’t even on the first drawing boards for the overall plan to land on the moon.
The Cold War probably launched human beings to the moon decades ahead of when we might have done it otherwise. It remains to be seen if we can get back, a development I would applaud. But there’s a chance I won’t see it happen again in my lifetime. How different my expectations when I was ten. I fully expected to be in space, and maybe on the moon, as an adult. I would still welcome the opportunity to visit or even live there.
