Last weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first manned space flight to the moon. In endless articles, observers are asking why no attempts have been made to land men on the moon since the Apollo program. In considering this, I think it's useful to examine the U.S. and other space programs against a prior, comparable period of exploration – the European journey to the Western Hemisphere. The similarities and differences between the two will help us understand the issues behind that question.
The Race to India
The initial European explorations five centuries ago had similarities to the U.S. and Soviet space programs of the 1960s. First, both were extremely expensive and carefully planned. The two countries most competitive in these explorations, Portugal and Spain, spent a substantial proportion of their national budgets on the expeditions.
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