Sometimes I wonder if one of the Apollo lagacies wasn't to produce famous people...the astronauts.

When we read what happened to them before, during and after their famous flights, we realize MOST of them have been bashed at for one reason or another.
Glenn and politics, Shepard and a golf ball, Grissom and a hatch, Carpenter and fuel consumption, Shirra and disobeying flight, Cooper and the UFOs, Young and being a loner, See for not being a good pilot, Armstrong for not defending the program, Borman for being too much of a leader and not good with airline unions, Aldrin for capitalizing too much on having been on the Moon, Bean for being a painter, Mitchell for esoterism (bashed by p, none other), Scott for stamps, Irwin for god, Schmitt for politics, Duke for being a born again christian, Cernan for ditching a helicopter, etc...etc...Only a few come out completely clean (Mc Divitt, White, Lovell...).

The new spirit of exploration will again produce "FAMOUS Persons" and whatever they'll do after their famous mission, they will be scrutinized, criticized like nobody else.
Is that what the bottomline is about? Produce fame? Produce people who's lives won't belong to them anymore?
Is that what's useful to the next generations?

Going round and round our beautiful planet, with a repetitive job, being not recognized at every corner aren't that bad things, comparatively.

I know of an astronaut who was already thinking about capitalizing on his fame before he went to space. He only went once.

Astronauts are humans, of course, they sacrifice their private life for the mission; but they won't ever become an average person.
But that won't necessarily help the legacy of their mission.

Raoul