Free Republic

THE DEPARTMENT of Transportation deals with the movement of things, which is important. The Department of Agriculture deals with food, which is vital. However, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deals with the origin, nature and meaning, if any, of the universe. Attention should be paid. Space lost its hold on America's imagination after the last lunar expedition in 1972. But the really exciting research had just begun, with the 1965 discovery that the universe is permeated with background radiation which confirmed that a Big Bang had indeed set what are now distant galaxies flying apart. A famous aphorism holds...

In mid-1969, as the Apollo missions were reaching their climax, NASA managers began to plan for the next phase of lunar exploration. This optimistic plan, issued by the Space Task Group, would have had NASA’s funding stay at Apollo levels, and, in a series of steps that followed Apollo, would have seen NASA develop such elements as a lunar orbit station in 1978, a lunar surface base in 1980, and a manned mission to Mars in 1981 or 1983. President Nixon rejected the ambitious Space Task Group plan, choosing instead to develop the infamous, loved and hated space shuttle. Since...