Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
The idea was to fly higher and faster until we had functioning spaceplanes -- originally, NASA didn't plan for a moon shot to happen until the late-1970s to early-1980s, when all the ground and orbital support structure would be in place. (These were the plans that Arthur C Clarke based his world of 2001 on.)
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Now that's interesting. Yet another example of how politics can trump other considerations. One wonders how things might have evolved if this plan had unfolded as intended. We'd still be up against the question of why we'd be going back to the Moon again and again, but at least each individual trip would be less expensive with an established and reusable infrastructure in place.