At the height of the attempt to send men to the Moon—when NASA sent three humans 25,000 miles an hour into space, circled the Moon, and brought them back safely—most citizens opposed the program. (Herbert E. Krugman, “Public Attitudes Toward the Apollo Space Program, 1965–1975,” Journal of Communication, December 1977)
It really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
