The title of this post is a quote from Arthur C Clarke, whose predictions may have often missed the mark, but his opinions on politics, religion and where we should be headed are always spot on:

‘Today, of course, it seems ludicrous that we could have imagined giant space-stations, orbiting Hilton hotels, and expeditions to Jupiter as early as 2001 …’

He says now, ‘I was there when Spiro Agnew said to Walter Cronkite, immediately after the Apollo 11 launch, that we must go on to Mars. In the event Agnew was lucky not to go to jail! Everybody was very euphoric at the launch. But it fell apart very quickly thanks to Vietnam, Watergate.

via An Interview with Arthur C. Clarke, by Stephen Baxter – clarkeaward.com

A couple of ways to spend money

While I’m quoting things, here are a couple of excerpts from Wikipedia, thrown together to make some point or other…

According to Steve Garber,^{[citation needed]} the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 Dollars (or approximately $136 billion in 2007 Dollars).

via NASA Budget – en.wikipedia.org

As of February 2010, around $704 billion has been spent based on estimates of current expenditure rates

via Financial cost of the Iraq War – en.wikipedia.org

Pictures from NASA on The Commons’ photostream on Flickr