11 May 2017
At a panel discussion during the the Armstrong Space Symposium at the Ohio State University, the talk was centered on whether humans should venture next to the Moon or Mars, how to get there, and who will get there first. “I think there may be a confluence of events in the world today that will predicate another landing on the Moon, but it won’t be [by the United States],” Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden said. “I think it might be China.” Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt disagreed with that prediction, but he did agree that China has big ambitions in space. As to whether billionaire-funded companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin will carry humans to space before any world governments do, former NASA administrator Michael Griffin asserted that commercial ventures “are not substitutes for national will…for a belief by our nation that we should be preeminent in space.”
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