BABloggee Jason Marsh sent me an interesting picture he put together. He was thinking about what was current in our culture when Apollo 17 went to the Moon... the last time a human set foot on another world. The date was 1972. Here's what he put together:

[Click to embiggen.] Hmmm. Gas lines. Viet Nam. Nixon. Elvis with Nixon. Disco. It's been too long. We need to go back. I certainly hope the President and Congress can figure out how; my biggest gripe about Obama's space plan (scroll down to Point #4 in that link) is ignoring the Moon for other goals. I think we do need to go back to the Moon, create a base and then a colony there, and use that knowledge to go to asteroids and beyond (even concurrently, to tell the truth). Posters like this one really drive the point home. It's been too long.