Anticipating this coming Sunday's anniversary, Mark Whittington has an editorial in the LA Times on space dreams deferred, if not lost altogether.

When we enter a race, we use a 'light-as- possible' racecar or jockey. When we set up to do business efficiently and effectively we use things like trains and semi rigs: things that get the job done! The 'race' between the US and USSR was what killed our ability to return! If we would have established trust and cooperation, much more robust hardware would have surely been derived! Would the Massive N1 booster have worked given just one more try? Would it still be flying today like the Soyuz and Proton? If not in a race we would have likely designed a mission scenario to link up in orbit (perhaps at an assembly station) and send a landing package four times as large to the moon! would other countries have joined in?

If it hadn't been a race, we wouldn't have done it at all.