From The Distance Of The Moon, Earth

You Are Not Going To Change The Minds Of People Who Are Looking For Attention.

On Apollo 11 In Route To The Moon, I Observed A Light Out The Window That Appeared To Be Moving Alongside Us. It Was Either The Rocket We Had Separated From, Or The 4 Panels That Moved Away When We Extracted The Lander From The Rocket And We Were Nose To Nose With The Two Spacecraft. So In The Close Vicinity, Moving Away, Were 4 Panels. And I Feel Absolutely Convinced That We Were Looking At The Sun Reflected Off Of One Of These Panels.

As We Reflect Back Upon The Tragic Loss Of Challenger And Her Brave Crew Of Heroes Who Were Aboard That Fateful Day, I Am Reminded That They Truly Represented The Best Of Us, As They Climbed Aloft On A Plume Of Propellant Gasses, Reaching For The Stars, To Inspire Us Who Were Earthbound.

There Is Very Little Doubt, In My Mind, That What The Next Monumental Achievement Of Humanity Will Be The First Landing By An Earthling, A Human Being, On The Planet Mars.

To Send Humans Back To The Moon Would Not Be Advancing. It Would Be More Than 50 Years After The First Moon Landing When We Got There, And We'd Probably Be Welcomed By The Chinese. But We Should Return To The Moon Without Astronauts And Build, With Robots, An International Lunar Base, So That We Know How To Build A Base On Mars Robotically.