Abstract
During this Symposium focusing on the future of human spaceflight, it is worth recalling that 12 people walked on the surface of the Moon between 1969 and 1972 but that, in the three decades since, human activity in space has been confined to orbits near Earth. Why? And how long is this “stay near home” approach to human spaceflight likely to persist?
To answer these questions, one must understand both why human travel beyond Earth orbit was initiated in the 1960s, and why it was abruptly halted so soon after the first lunar landing. Are there lessons to be learned from this experience relevant to the future of human spaceflight?
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References
Logsdon, J. M.: The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1970
Siddiqi, A.: Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, NASA SP-2000–4408, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, USA, 2000
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Logsdon, J.M. (2002). Once, We Went to the Moon. In: Rycroft, M. (eds) Beyond the International Space Station: The Future of Human Spaceflight. Space Studies, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9880-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9880-4_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-6154-6
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