Jeesh, Cape Canaveral really went to hell after people stopped giving a crap about space travel. We already beat the Russkis to the Moon and no one want to nuke anything from orbit anymore, so I can see why a lot of people have lost interest. The last time anyone managed to get to the Moon and back was 1972, and that’s an awfully long time by any standard. If the last successful mission to the moon was a person they’d have grown up, graduated from college, gotten a job at the cracker factory, gotten married, had three kids, raised those kids to adulthood, and drunk themselves to death by now.

I think the string of unsuccessful missions before and after that really put a damper on things; people want Moon rocks, not a big heap of well-done astronaut. I think we need to work our way back up to where we were beforehand instead of starting where we left off. We’re too far gone now, and every useful member of the space program has died of boredom. We need to start off by sending a few monkeys to test the water. If they don’t come back we’ll readjust and try again later. I mean — how hard can it be? If a bunch of robo-dweebs with slide ruler can do it then we normal people can.

(Many thanks to our dear friend Charles Schneider for sending this one along)