Something that really struck me about photographs from World War II were these pictures of 20 year old kids who were USMC 2nd lieutenants who had just survived hand-to-hand combat on Okinawa or some other god forsaken place. Typically those young guys had a look about them that internally they were 65 years old. Now take these incredibly mature young men who survived World War II and return them to America where their wives had been working as lathe operators or locomotive engineers (Rosie the Riveter). The United States had just gone through an incredible technological quantum leap unlike anything experienced before in human history, e.g. before WW-II they were flying canvas covered biwinged aircraft but ended the war with B-29 Superfortresses armed with nuclear weapons. The United States was the only major nation left standing economically after WW-II. It took about 10 years to shift the nation from a total war footing back to a mainly peace time economy (we still had the Korean and Vietnam wars). That took us to 1960 and was the basis for that era's incredible optimism. It's no wonder the Apollo program was a product of the 1960s. It's also no wonder that we've been unable to do anything close to the Apollo program in the last 30 years. That incredible culture which existed in the 1960s may have been our one and only shot at colonizing space. Too bad it ran out of puff in 1968.

Gary