Time to Return: Upcoming Lunar Missions

After nearly 45 years, mankind is once again looking to explore Earth's closest celestial companion, our moon. With a rich history of innovation, perserverance, sacrifice, and success, it's no wonder that the siren song has called us once again into the cold dark night of space. As the coming years approach, we will all be looking to the men and women of industry and science to once again propel mankind into the heavens. With several upcoming missions in early stages, both NASA and private sector enterprise will move us one step closer to our ultimate goal, Mars.   

Our First Steps

May 25th, 1961 witnessed one of the boldest statements in human history. During his "Moon-shot" address, President John F. Kennedy announced to the world that the United States of America would land a man on the moon and return him safely before the end of the decade. This statement was made after only a handful of low-orbit operations proved successful, and technology required to accomplish this feat was barely on the horizon. However, with the will of the American people, and the greatest minds the world had to offer, this insurmountable feat became arguably the greatest success in the history of mankind. We aim to repeat that. 

As passionate followers of the space industry, we are often left wondering where the excitement for space exploration went. There was a time when American society thrived on our comsmic successes and strived to reach even inches past the previous boundaries left by man. Although the purpose of the lunar missions was arguably to establish technological superiority, there still lives the basic human instinct to explore and understand. 

Mission 1: NASA

​"Hey! Who let the brown guy be in charge of the rocket thingies?"
- Donald Trump

We need to be sure that the information we provide is credible and clear. They can be opinions, but we will need to be sure that it is abundantly obvious when we use other sources. If it is a single word or phrase we can just Hyperlink it, or we can "Hyperlink entire quotes" to avoid this problem. Also, I need to fill out a bit more space. This article isn't meant to be a source for news, only to express interest. We need to make sure we are telling the bullet-point version of the story. I will try to keep it about this long.

(EDIT CAPTION) Photo of SpaceX and Tesla Founder Elon Musk. (DATE) (SOURCE)

Mission 2: SpaceX

​"The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species."
- Elon Musk

Elon Musk first set his sights on the stars in early 2002 when he founded commercial space giant, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation--better known by its moniker SpaceX. 15 years later, they are ready to start making their mark on the heavens. Initially developed to provide payload delivery to the International Space Station, the newest iteration of SpaceX's Falcon 9 heavy-class rocket has made history as the first reusable spacecraft. After it successfully launched, landed on an drone-ship, and launch again, even skeptics are starting to pay attention. As SpaceX continues to develop it's Dragon capsule for manned commercial applications, it seeks both public and private funding for future missions to the moon and beyond. So far, two unnamed contributors have bought the first commercial flight around the moon scheduled for 2018. The future is now!​

Mission 3: Blue Origin

"A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective."
- Jeff Bezos

We need to be sure that the information we provide is credible and clear. They can be opinions, but we will need to be sure that it is abundantly obvious when we use other sources. If it is a single word or phrase we can just Hyperlink it, or we can "Hyperlink entire quotes" to avoid this problem. Also, I need to fill out a bit more space. This article isn't meant to be a source for news, only to express interest. We need to make sure we are telling the bullet-point version of the story. I will try to keep it about this long. ​

So What Now?

I just wanted to add some filler space down here. I will be writing a summary of the three previously outlined projects. This is an OpEd kind of post so really I can say whatever i want. So here are some random words.. to make it interesting I will start with a random word and play word association. Actually I'm going to start with idk... the 5th word of the second paragraph on this page. Let's begin: Boldest, marker, drawing, lottery, tax, thumb tacks, cork board, investigation, research, scientist, breakthrough, koolaid man, juice, dbi, hell hole, dbi... shit I think i just found a paradox. How about the 17th word in the 3rd paragraph. Let's try this again: for, clover, aliens, space, empty... okay....

Article Provided By:
Zachary H. Freeman
Generation Connect, LLC
Visit Him Online (HYPERLINK)

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