A ca. 1966 promotional film for NASA, describing the events of 1965 and planned future events.
Man, I’m jealous: for a brief time in the early/mid 1960’s, the future for space exploration looked spectacular. And then…
Now NASA seems wholly directionless. There’s SLS, a massively over budget, massively behind schedule rocket that has no program to support. the US can’t even make adequate quantities of plutonium to support a decent production run of RTGs for unmanned probes.
It’s not impossible that days like this could come again; SpaceX and Starship could make it happen. But while Apollo relied on a base of hundreds of thousands of employees and contractors, SpaceX relies on *one* *guy* to maintain focus. Something happens to Elon Musk, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX will fall into the hands of suits who decide that wasting all that money on risky and seemingly unprofitable “advancement” ain’t worth doing.