[fuzzfactor]

Successful moonshots were a Presidential initiative of Kennedy.

He was a great enough President that the momentum did not stop even long after he had been killed.

Kennedy was very widely loved around the world, except of course by the communist dictator type.

But Nixon hated him without a doubt. It took a hell of a deceptive machine to get Nixon elected and it took years after losing to Kennedy the first time. Machine kept on going brrr.

By about 1972 it was plain to see that very few Americans were going to be able to afford anything which was the least bit costly or expensive for the foreseeable future.

And getting fewer. Nixon's inflation was just beginning to build steam and his full-blown recession was just around the corner.

Individuals, businesses, institutions, everyone except the most fortunate could do nothing but cut back, and too often that was not enough.

With that other type of Presidential initiative, the malfeasance kind, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. That's what I mean by the foreseeable future.

To a lot of us it was pretty much accepted that maybe it would take until the 21st century, which was just as far in the future as WWII was in the past. There were no signs positive enough for anything else. All you could do is use your imagination and hope that nobody crooked got to be in power like that again, plus pray nobody else would take a chance on dropping the ball either.

But 2026 ? You've got to be kidding, nobody thought it would take this long, surely Americans would be so advanced by this time that nobody would ever accept such dishonest, imitation leadership ever again.

But here we are.

Anybody who had a moonshot in mind a couple years ago has to be whole lot more realistic now, the dollar as a currency is just not valuable enough any more to cope with the engineering requirements in anything like a timely way by comparison.

As another poster mentioned, the Chinese may be who does it this time.

If nothing else their leadership may be deeply corrupt, but it would be worse if they were actively trying to destroy their own currency at the same time.

[hulitu]

Kennedy was very widely loved around the world, except of course by the CIA type.