Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?

Apollo is the greatest adventure of all humankind, and it needs to be recorded in every way possible for future generations in books, in movies and on television. … I’m an artist. That’s the way I care about things. Maybe 200 years from now, someone will say, "I’m glad he did that."

Our whole nation was blessed to have such men and women serving in our space program. Their loss is deeply felt, especially in this place, where so many of you called them friends. The people of NASA are being tested once again. In your grief, you are responding as your friends would have wished -- with focus, professionalism, and unbroken faith in the mission of this agency.

It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies

The final days of their own lives were spent looking down upon this Earth. And now, on every continent, in every land they could see, the names of these astronauts are known and remembered. They will always have an honored place in the memory of this country. And today I offer the respect and gratitude of the people of the United States.

As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.

To leave behind Earth and air and gravity is an ancient dream of humanity. For these seven, it was a dream fulfilled. Each of these astronauts had the daring and discipline required of their calling. Each of them knew that great endeavors are inseparable from great risks. And each of them accepted those risks willingly, even joyfully, in the cause of discovery.

Only by breaking through to new paradigms of space travel will more than a handful of us ever get to Mars and make it a potentially livable place...
Getting to Mars is too big an accomplishment for us to feel proud by just by swinging by. We are a nation of enterprise as well as exploration, and we're not about to go there without making something of it.

We are meeting here tonight at a time of great and fundamental change in America--of changes more far-reaching than have ever been seen in the span of a single lifetime. These changes summon all of us--the Federal Government, the States, the counties, the cities, and towns--each person everywhere--to a high adventure in human advancement. We stand on the threshold of a time when the impossible becomes possible--a time when we can choose goals that, just a generation ago, would have seemed as unreachable as the moon seemed to be unreachable then. We can reach those goals. The Spirit of Apollo gave us a brief, glittering glimpse of how far we can stretch. Thousands of minds, thousands of hands, all were marshaled in selfless dedication in achieving a great human dream--and the dream came true. Today, we in America can afford to dream--but we have to put drive behind those dreams. This requires that we turn--now--to a new strategy for the seventies--one that enables us to command our own future by commanding the forces of change. Only 7 years from now, in 1976, America will celebrate its 200th birthday as a nation. So let us look ahead to that great anniversary in the Spirit of Apollo-and discover in ourselves a new Spirit of '76. Let us resolve that what we can do, we will do. When a great nation confronts its shortcomings, not angrily, but analytically; when it commits its resources, not wantonly but wisely; when it calms its hatreds, masters its fears, and draws together in a spirit of common endeavor, then the forces of progress are on the march.

NASA has no next-generation manned space exploration vehicle offstage. Officials have talked about developing a new rocket to put something out there, but the chatter sounds pretty vague and demoralized. I’m not persuaded that it will amount to anything. The end of the shuttle era was a poignant moment in American science, full of sad resonances for dissolving dreams of adventure in other worlds. The government is out of [real] money, and capital will only get scarcer as our fossil fuel energy inputs decline. Space travel will probably prove to have been another product of the cheap oil age, retrograde as that sounds. The truth works backward and forward, and sometimes it hurts.

Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of _Apollo_. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.

Travel is broadening. It's time to hit the road again.

Long before the moon mission, I had told NASA that Apollo 8 would be my last flight. It was a decision reached after a long talk with Susan, although the decision was strictly mine.

Two years ago, I resigned from the scientist‐astronaut program primarily because of NASA's indifference to science in its manned space efforts. Since then an impressive array of scientists associated with the Apollo program have also resigned for similar reasons. They include the chief scientist, the director of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, the principal investigator of Apollo lunar surface geology, the curator of the lunar samples, and another scientist-astronaut.<p>It seems utterly incredible that so many well-respected scientists could resign at a time one would suppose to be their finest hour - the return of the first rocks and detailed pictures from the lunar surface. Eugene Shoemaker, now the chairman of Caltech's Division of Geological Sciences, quit his Apollo work “out of deep concern for the direction of the nation's space goal.” He described Apollo as a “poor system for exploring the moon… The same job could have been done with unmanned systems at one-fifth the cost three or four years ago.”<p> […] In these times of conflicting, uncertain goals both inside and outside NASA, I think the unmanned planetary program provides a good example of what can be done. The Mariner 6 and 7 flyby missions gave us remarkable pictures and valuable scientific information, yet each cost less than 15 percent of the price of sending two test pilots to the moon.<p>In the future, probes will be sent to the Martian surface and to the other planets; these relatively inexpensive projects should go far in satisfying our most fundamental reason for going into space: to understand nature and ourselves better by exploring the universe.

We had risen to probably one of the greatest challenges in history, put a man on the moon in the decade. We'd created incredible technologies. But what was most important, we'd created the teams, what I call the human factor. People who were energized by a mission. And these teams were capable of moving right on and doing anything America asked them to do in space. And what we did is we watched these teams disappear. We watched the great contractors — the Grummans, the North Americans, the Lockheeds — disappear from the horizon. I think that's really sad that as Americans we have destroyed much of this infrastructure that we had in the days when we went to the moon.