The White House vows America will never give up the moon again

As the mission of Artemis II to circumnavigate the moon proceeds, NASA has laid out the long-term plans to establish a permanent base on the lunar surface. Indeed, the White House has thrown down the gauntlet by posting a message on the X social media network: “America will never give up the moon again.”

The bold statement means that the Trump administration intends to rectify the mistake the Nixon administration made over 50 years ago, which was to wind down the Apollo program, even going so far as to cancel the last three planned moon landings.

The Apollo program had achieved its goal as articulated by President John F. Kennedy, to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s. But the program had built up an infrastructure that enabled five more successful moon missions and might have been expanded into a lunar base in the 1970s. Mars missions could have followed in the 1980s.

A hint of the brilliant age of space exploration that the U.S. abandoned is depicted in the alternate history TV series “For All Mankind” and in my own book, “Children of Apollo.”

But, as the saying goes, better late than never.

The announcement that NASA would begin work on a lunar base in the 21st century was met with near universal acclaim.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees NASA, stated on X, “Space is not just symbolic. It is strategic. A sustained lunar surface presence ensures America,........

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