In many ways these are dreary, dreadfully boring alternatives to moon colonies and space travel.
They floated on spacewalks, planted flags on the moon and built space stations, all playing their role in an international rivalry.
The Obama Administration has canceled plans it inherited to send astronauts back to the Moon, the Space Shuttle is about to retire, and the only near-term human space flight initiative on the books is a handout to rich California businessmen to update old technology.
While NASA aim to have a moon base by 2025 other space agencies and companies have expressed an interest in the moon and its potential energy reserves.
The moon hung over this space, and it was as if the planet and its satellite were acting as mirror images of each other.
The Moon Agreement builds upon the Outer Space Treaty but also says that any natural resources found on the moon are part of "the common heritage of mankind" - in other words, they must be shared.
They are believed to have broken away from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are our nearest neighbours in space after the Moon.
One alternative to Ares, proposed by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is to use modified versions of their existing Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets both to go to the moon and to resupply the space station, but at lower cost.
Now Pell is back with a new start-up working on space exploration, Moon Express.
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The films, showing man in space, on the Moon, on Mars, and the "unknown", fascinated the boy Rutan.
The utterly mundane idea in the video is that we will be doing retail space travel to the moon.
It's hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all.
In 1980, the Nevada-based entrepreneur claimed ownership of the moon after finding what he calls a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which forbids countries from owning the moon but, according to Hope, does not forbid individuals from owning it.
J002E3, as the object was called, actually skimmed past the Moon before whizzing back out into deeper space, disappointing the scientists.
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Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program.
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The imagination of scientists has enabled us to travel through outer space and walk on the moon, feats that were once only possible in the realm of myth.
SpaceX was quick to make the point that the ability to carry on despite an engine failure demonstrates a big advantage of multi-engined rockets like the Falcon (Space Shuttles and Saturn V moon rockets could both do something similar).
How much cheaper and easier (if less dramatic) it would have been if Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin could simply have stepped into a lift car in space, pressed M for moon, and descended in tranquillity to the sea of that name.
Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the cost of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions.
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He once told me that when he entered Princeton in 1969, man had landed on the moon, inspiring him to pursue physics and space technology.
"We'll be keeping an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-moon system passes through the same region of space, " Cooke said.
It enables the Chinese to build and operate their own space station, establish the technology that is necessary to efficiently send astronauts to the moon and beyond, build and operate fuel depots, and construct vehicles and bases in space.
Last December, one of the last men on the Moon, Harrison Schmitt, told BBC News that he believed Nasa and other government run space agencies were "too inefficient" to be able to send astronauts back to the Moon.
Advances here will inform the more scifi-ish imponderables like a space elevator, and asteroid- or moon-mining.
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The Outer Space Treaty provides a legal framework for the international use of space for peaceful purposes, including the moon and other celestial bodies.
For a country that put a man on the moon and ran a taxi service to the International Space Station, this is not rocket science!
Pell founded the company with two others that he met at Singularity University, Naveen Jain, the founder of InfoSpace and Intelius, and Dr. Robert Richards, a founder of International Space University, who is CEO of Moon Express.
FORBES: From Search Engine To Space Exploration For Co-Founder of Moon Express
Today's commercial rockets can lift only about 10 tons into space, far short of what is needed to enable deep-space exploration returning to the Moon, and later venturing on to Mars the things that are and should be NASA's core mission.
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