When President Kennedy Took Office, I Was

Standing On The Moon Looking Back At Earth - This Lovely Place You Just Came From - You See All The Colours, And You Know What They Represent. Having Left The Water Planet, With All That Water Brings To Earth In Terms Of Colour And Abudance Life, The Absence Of Water And Atmosphere On The Desolate Surface Of The Moon Gives Rise To A Stark Contrast.

It Was Designed To Have An Impact On The Stalemate Over Mutually Assured Destruction With The Soviet Union. Us Reaching The Moon Convinced Gorbachev And Other Leaders That The Soviet Union Couldn't Compete With The U.s., So They Revised Their Agenda. But People Have Short Memories.

Globalisation Means Many Other Countries Are Asserting Themselves And Trying To Take Over Leadership. Please Don't Ask Americans To Let Others Assume The Leadership Of Human Exploration. We Can Do Wonderful Science On The Moon, And Wonderful Commercial Things. Then We Can Pack Up And Move On To Mars.

Before Deciding What To Do About National Space Policy, Obama Set Up An Outside Review Panel Of Space Experts, Headed Up By My Friend Norm Augustine, Former Head Of Lockheed Martin And A Former Government Official.

We Can Continue To Try And Clean Up The Gutters All Over The World And Spend All Of Our Resources Looking At Just The Dirty Spots And Trying To Make Them Clean. Or We Can Lift Our Eyes Up And Look Into The Skies And Move Forward In An Evolutionary Way.