frodo1008,<br /><br />I seem to recall reading somewhere that several analysts close to John F. Kennedy believed that he intended the Apollo program to be in part a barginning chip, something which could be pulled off the table if the other player's bluff was called. (Many people seem unaware that the Soviet Union was leading the race for the Moon through most of the 1960's. Only a catastrophic failure on the pad set their plans back so far that it was decided to scrap the program and focus on building space stations, which are far more important to getting off the planet than any other activity.) If JFK were as intelligent as he was purported to be, he certainly would have seen that the Apollo program was a dead end. <br /><br />Sending ships directly to the Moon from Earth is like sending rowboats to unload a cruise ship. Without a space station to provide a staging area in orbit, we are reduced to ridiculously tiny payloads landing on the Moon. (Am I wrong to believe that the Vision has been reduced to symbolic landings by a handful of people at a time? The discussion over whether to rendeavouz in Earth orbit or in Lunar orbit seems to be an echo of a discussion that was held in about 1963. There is no space station in the plan, there are no Lunar Transports, shuttling back and forth between the Moon and Earth orbit, there are just capsules going to the Moon, and then returning. Haven't we seen this movie before?) I would like to believe that, if Kennedy had not been carried willy-nilly through Dealy Plaza, he would have added a space station to the Apollo program, (One Saturn 5 launch would fly most of the International Space Station, I believe.) and some type of reusable spacecraft to get to and from the Moon. The Apollo program would probably have been superseded by a sustainable development program very quickly, because that is what the Russians were planning for.<br /><br />Be that as it may, this furor about the delay in shuttle flights strikes me as b <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>