Idiot-In-Chief

Check out this here promotising. Listen real close:
"This is America. We figgured out how to put a man on the Moon..."
No, fool, we put a man on the Moon. Except it was two men at a time, several times. And it wasn't any nebulous "we," it was a huge lot of scientists and engineers and techs and paper-shufflers and doctors and lawyers and secretaries and pi-luts what did it; the rest of us just watched and paid taxes, or our parents did.

Lots of people, companies, nations have figured out how to put a man on the Moon. China has. Russia did as a nation -- and a long lifetime earlier, one Russian pretty well doped it out, too. Werner von Braun did it several times before he ever came to the U.S. and I'm pretty sure Hermann Oberth or Robert Goddard could'a talked you through what it took, too. Verne ran the math far enough to realize the method he used in his book would squish the passengers -- but he outlined the problem in a way that points to the answer.

...And if you are a certain kind of fool, dreaming about it, talking about it, why, that's every bit as good as really doing it.

Except it isn't.

Go there. Do the thing. Then you'll be great. Up 'til that point? Just another dime-a-dozen dreamer; and bless them, we need them -- but dreams alone will not get you there.

Unless you're a hot-air merchant. Like -- well, you know.

Five hunnert'n thirty-five, six, seven....