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This article at SpaceDaily.com caught my eye, for what may or may not be obvious reasons.

Local color aside, McKnight makes some interesting points regarding the generational shift occurring in the space industry. Though some might take exception to this:

In some ways, though, we have changed as a nation. The builders of Apollo were a generation in lockstep: they spent their childhoods exposed to the breadlines and work projects of the Great Depression, then donned uniforms in early adulthood. Their whole lives had been organized by the government in a way unimaginable to the world today, outside Cuba and North Korea. Apollo was simply one more directive in their commanded lives.

it’s not far off the mark.

He also nails it on the head regarding “mule” projects:

A crash project, to be at all effective, must have a sole deliverable: a nuclear bomb, a superconducting supercollider, “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

Once done, it’s done. Lacking breadth, lacking roots in the rest of society, it cannot be a living, growing thing. We are left with flags and footprints.

An excellent article.