43 Years ago today, we created a symbol that anything was possible

was useless and incompetent and should be drowned in a bathtub.

Think of what the world has gained.

what we can't do, and how to tear the other person/group down. The hatred in this country astounds me, we've become a bunch of slackers and in the big picture a bunch of fools. Yep, teaming and working together for a better world is seen by many today as evilness.

In 2012 we (the USA) cannot put a woman or man into space on one of our own rockets.

And, we have people trying to destroy the post office an essential part of communication in our nation.

There are signs that are best days are over.

The moon landing may just have been the peak of US civilization and culture -- I remember it well and with great admiration for the people who built the space program.

exception and not the norm. The US continues to slide downward in rankings with other industrialized nations and I get this feeling we are not near the bottom.

It took the Great Depression to move American forward, it took Sputnik to shake America into moving ahead with the space program in a serious way. It seems great strides forward do not happen without some major event. I often wonder what the next major event might be.

What has happened to "We came in peace for all mankind"?

Thank you for this!

Send out CARE packages or joined the Peace Corps. Imagine what Republicans today would say about that?
This is NOT the America, I grew up in.

things were not perfect, but at least it felt like we were trying to move ahead, to be a caring nation, people seemed interested in "we are in this together." Today, the country is so alien to what it once was IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight

Provided NASA be allowed to do what it's supposed to do, i.e. explore.

http://www.krusekronicle.com/2012/05/private-spacecraft-docks-with-space-station.html

CNN) -- A private spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Friday, a milestone in a new era of commercial space flight.

The docking happened just before 10 a.m., almost two hours later than planned. A radar system aboard the unmanned SpaceX Dragon that measures distance to the station had picked up a different part of the space station, meaning it could not dock properly, NASA said. ...

... The launch is an important step for NASA and the United States, which currently has no means of independently reaching space. NASA relies on the Russian space agency to ferry U.S. astronauts to orbit.

hasn't gotten off their butts to do, for the past few decades, namely develop a reliable rocket which can most likely be man-rated, along with an economical, multi-purpose capsule that for now can be used for cargo and most likely soon will be able to ferry crew to and from, again, LEO.

This is not a slam on NASA; there are lots of good reasons for them not to re-invent the wheel. Low Earth Orbit is increasingly becoming a place where we live and work and do business, so that's not where NASA should be focusing their energy. And the Ares-1/Orion Capsule arrangement wasn't due to come online and take people into orbit until 2017, or so.. and even under the best-case scenario, the design had serious potential problems that several engineers had pointed out. Elon Musk is basically ready to do it, right now.

To my mind (barring further budget cuts) NASA is at least spending the meager resources they're still given where they can best do some long-range good; most importantly developing a heavy lift rocket which can be used in the boundary-pushing manned exploration (asteroids, the moon, eventually Mars) that is, really, NASA's mandate. For putting people on top of that, they can use the substantial work already done on the Orion capsule.

But I actually think the current plan is a good one, given the political realities. Of course, I strongly believe NASA -and science and exploration in general- needs more funding. You will not find a stronger proponent of both unmanned and manned, publicly funded space exploration than myself. I just don't think that is mutually exclusive with private development of space and space-related resources.

to the rich. with the result that the exploration and its fruits will be privatized.

It doesn't make much sense to have NASA taxiing people to Low Earth Orbit. It DOES make sense to give the job to SpaceX.

A magnificent achievement, marred by Nixon interrupting them halfway through to congratulate them.

But part and parcel of that is optimism. I understand being disheartened, but I'd like to see it become cool to be an optimist, on our side, again.

It is interesting to listen to Neil Armstrong's description of the lunar surface.