Little Jack Horner

Yes, there were a lot of great scientific discoveries and spin-offs made in racing the Reds to the moon. But they could have also been made while undertaking more than a political PR stunt.

There are many scientists who feel that framing it as a race to get there planted the seed of the abandonment of a serious space program. After all, you can only get there first once.

And without a serious goal or long-term plans, it became a few too many expensive rock expeditions for the public to take.

The Astronauts were for the most part "spam in a can." I suspect they went with pilots to counter the perception that they were treating them like passengers. And again, much more might've been accomplished with less expensive automated missions. We shouldn't have sent men until we needed them to do more than play golf.

But heck, selling heroes to the taxpayers may have been the only way to finance such a thing.

Dante