Basic History of the American Manned Space Program

It started under Ike in the 1950s and by the late 50s, was pretty much all you ever heard about, at least if you were a school kid in those days…

“GOTTA GET TO THE MOON! GOTTA GET TO THE MOON! GOTTA GET TO THE MOON! GOTTA GET TO THE MOON! GOTTA GET TO THE MOON…”

And that went on throughout the 1960s until finally (you can only talk about something for so long and, sooner or later, you gotta Do it), in July 1969, with Apollo 11, they actually landed humans on the moon and thereafter managed to bring them back to earth safely. From what we read, there were six more Apollo missions, ending in 1972 when, seemingly, the program was just getting started. Certainly that would be true for any sort of a GOVERNMENT program…

At that point, one of two things happened, and it is up to the reader to determine which version of the thing he cares to believe:

1. The powers that be in the US government said to themselves something like “Space Flight… Oh yeah, been there, done that, now it’s time to get back to serious business (perfecting our welfare state, doling out pork, graft, bribery, usual kinds of government business)… Supposedly, this occurred after just three years of manned missions, after more than a decade of effort getting to the point at which such missions were possible.
2. One or more things which they had seen on the moon had messed their minds so badly that manned space exploration became a black operation at that point in time with the public hearing no more about it other than for the occasional bit of information which somehow or other slipped past the censors.

One of those two stories is a fairytale. And the first version of the story (item 1), requires the viewer to jettison everything he knows about human behavior and about the behavior of government agencies and government projects, in order to believe.