T-plus 35 years, Apollo 11 team looks back
Proud workers gather at KSC to mark moon mission’s launch

http://www.flatoday.com/news/space/stories/2004b/spacestoryN0716APOLLO.htm

Even folks who started out talking about “balancing space and social needs” would come around and agree the GOP could not be allowed a hegemony on the vision of Americans leading humanity beyond LEO. Everyone agreed that the goal of America leaving LEO was essential.

The SEA alliance is based on the idea that we will certainly argue about how long to stay on the Moon before “on to Mars” and other details but doing something (anything!) beyond LEO is more important than organizing yet another circled-up firing squad.

Even Robert Zubrin rallied his legions of “HEAP – NO – TIZED” followers to argue Moon first to the US Congress, but of course as a steppingstone before “On to Mars!” I am told that this last occurrence was a truly remarkable event.

= = =

Frankly, since the orbiter is broken beyond long term repair, it is either “Moon, Mars or beyond” or nothing and no Democrat could possibly survive gutting NASA.

http://www.space.com/news/armstrong_nasa_040311.html

You can find the article about John Glenn’s opposition to Bush’s space plan here:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/04/moon.mars.commission.reut/

Finally, space advocates should realize that with the exception of the “space” reporters, conventional media have lied and distorted the truth about space for three decades plus. We can not depend on them to tell the truth about what the real potential of space development and settlement is, so we must do it ourselves, and speak with a united voice for common goals which the recent effort to have a “Space Blitz” are but a beginning. We must keep up the pressure, and find ways to motivate the people who print their lies as facts like the VSC costing way more than it will in fact, and pressure them to retract their fiction and tell the truth. Or we must bypass conventional media, and get the truth outr ourselves. Either way, we must do something different from what we have dome to sell the meme of space to the public, or continue with the insane repetitions of the past that have not worked to change hearts and minds, and never will.