President John F. Fennedy - May 25, 1961

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... unless we get stuck in a war halfway across the world that sucks up all of our available GDP for 10 years.  Then it would be ridiculous to waste all that money just so we could say we beat the Russians to a meaningless goal.

Cool stuff there Captain ~ Ask not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for "Flight Simming" , isn't that what he said, kinda sorta, something along those lines, maybe, I think thats what he said,, "Flight Simming" , then again ~ I could be wrong !

I don't agree with calling meaningless to be able to put a man on the moon. It's sad that people don't understand the amazing amount of resources we can get out of the moon if there was a bit more interest in doing so.

I also think that competition was what made NASA be able to invent so much technology in just 8 years, although I don't agree with putting an american flag on the moon. Or, at least, just the american flag. That was pratically calling the moon as american territory, when it's nobody's and everybody's land.
Nevertheless I think the USA could use it's money better. NASA's budget doesn't even reach 1% of the total US bugdet and even so they managed to put several men on the moon, keep space shuttles flying for over 40 years, send several landing probes to Venus, Mars, Titan, etc. Send 4 very important exploration probles Voyager 1/2 and Pioneer 10/11. And even sent a lot of satelites and research instruments to look up onto the stars and make new discoveries every day. And they keep all this up and running with less than 1% of the total US budget.

So, yeah, I can't even imagine what would NASA do if they had the same monetary support as the military forces. I bet we would have resort hotels on Mars and the Moon... 

Reaching the moon before the "hateful enemy" was simply a political move to keep the attention of the masses focused on something. Had it had a REAL meaning, the missions would have never stopped in 72. Ultimately useless, if not politically speaking. And speaking if political reasons means speaking of meaningless reasons by default.

Fact is, if you allow me this metaphor, when space travel is regarded we earthlings are still experimenting with oars powered canoes carved out of a tree trunk and/or rafts to reach a little cliff out of the sea right in front of our little island... and that happened how many times before those travels were abandoned? Five times? ...and lately we only used said canoes and rafts to circumnavigate our island, contenting ourselves to delegate farther travels only to bottles with a paper scroll inside because of the objectively unpractical long sailing times.

And unpractical long sailing times will remain until we invent at least the sails, or better yet some form of steam engine at the very least, around which build a real boat...

Do you see someone try to build said boat? Or its sails? Or its steam engine? Nope, too busy in other things, they still toy with canoes and rafts powered by oars, proudly calling them the cutting edge of today's technology... just like 40 years ago. Isn't that JUST great?