<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><div>On Thursday, June 22, 2017 6:06 AM Giulio Prisco <<a href="mailto:giulio@gmail.com">giulio@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><span></span><blockquote type="cite"><span>Of course I agree that cheaper space access is needed and,</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>once it's there, will open many doors.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>Then Hawking has it backwards: we need to work on making it less expensive rather than shooting for really big Apollo-like projects that drain budgets and raise costs.</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>But don't dismiss the power of symbols. Apollo was all about</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>flags and footprints, and everyone knew that.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>I disagree. I wasn't a witness to that time, but from reading the histories it seems like space exploration was a bigger focus but there was also the Cold War. And from reading people from that time, I don't think they saw as let's just do a flags and footprints mission. They were demonstrating capabilities, doing geology, seeing how humans stood up to long-duration space travel, and the like. It seems to me that many of them were focused on doing much more than Apollo.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Add to this, there were some who argued against Apollo and wanted a space station _first_. IIRC, von Braun argued that way.</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>Yet Apollo inspired a whole generation, and some of them did</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>great things, in space and in other sectors.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>I believe Apollo made many folks think space is far too expensive and dangerous to be done by anything by a Manhattan Project approach.</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>We need cheap access to space, and people like you are doing good</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>things for that, but we also need to start dreaming again.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>I don't think "we" ever stopped dreaming. The problem is to build foundations under our dreams. There either has to be some game-changing breakthrough or space has to get a helluva lot less expensive. The former is unpredictable. but the latter seems to be happening, especially with SpaceX's approach.</span><br><br><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> Sample my Kindle books via:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><font color="#000000" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://author.to/DanUst" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">http://author.to/DanUst</a></font></div></div></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><br></div></body></html>