[backhoe]

I want us to get serious about space exploration so badly I can taste it. When I was a kid, growing up with the X-15, Gemini, and Apollo programs in the background, I never doubted that we would build space stations, colonize the Moon, and light out for Mars.

Now, I sit on the downside of life, and wonder if my teenage neices will have a chance at the Moon, or will we delay even more so it's their children who get a shot at it.

NASA has morphed into a timid, money-eating beauracracy that can't get out of its own way... I surely wish private industry could be more involved, and perhaps one day it will be.

[Prospero]

Biggest full moon of the year, June 2. Only 222,000 miles away.

Can't look at the disk without picking out the landing sites, thinking about those bleached out American flags, most not blown over by the upper stage LM lift off.

I've lobbied for so very long for precisely the kind of well-thought, methodical vision for the Program mapped out by the administration.

And, the remarkable leaps being made by private industry - wing launched, equatorial ship lauches, hobby sound rockets, the X prize contestants...

Things are looking up.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....I surely wish private industry could be more involved, and perhaps one day it will be.

That could be on the horizon.

[RightWhale]

private industry could be more involved

It would be if we used the most powerful weapon in our free constitutional democracy: private property rights.