I just got done reading Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. It was interesting and covered a lot of ground. Plus there were lots of pretty pictures. :)

The chapter that interested my the most was the one about the Apollo missions. The first men on the moon flew in Apollo 11 in 1969. There have been ONLY 12 men to walk on the moon, total. The last moon mission, Apollo 17, happened in 1972.

No one has walked on the moon in my entire life time.

The Apollo missions were purely political, I know. The US wanted to beat the USSR to the moon. They did. And that was that. Apollo 12 through 17 were merely running on the fumes of the success of Apollo 11. And since then, what have we got? One Challenger explosion, one broken space telescope, and a couple of robots on Mars. yipee.

Kind of embarrassing, huh? It is understood that sending people into space is very dangerous. But why didn't we keep moving in a space- oriented direction after the Apollos? The cold war drove us to some incredible heights with the Apollos... John Kennedy proposed the idea in 1961, and NASA had the job done before the close of the decade.

And now it's the year 2000, we should be sending people to vacation on the moon! But, nope: Twelve men is quite enough, thank you.

I want more.

Links of interest:

• ww.nasa.gov
• NSSDC Photo Gallery
• Astronomy Picture of the Day

Apollo 8 Earth rise from moon orbit.