The subject of the financially disastrous S.S. Statendam cruise to witness the launch of Apollo 17 has been raised hereabouts before. It’s famous among a relatively small number of people, and forgotten by the public.
Turns out someone made a documentary about the cruise, using footage filmed on board… clips of speakers, bits of interviews, discussions, etc. There are some *really* interesting people (Krafft Ehricke, Carl Sagan, Hugh Downs, Issac Asimov, etc.) saying some *really* interesting things here… and a lot of it is damned depressing. This was the last Apollo flight, and they all knew it; but what the future of manned spaceflight really held they didn’t really know. Some were optimistic, a lot were pessimistic. And the pessimists gave their reasons for why things were going to stagnate… and they were pretty much right. Feh.
Sadly, it seems that this documentary, about half an hour in length, lost its second half hour somewhere. Maybe someone has it stored away somewhere…