From May 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Gene Kranz was the man to have running Mission Control. He was flight director for Apollo 11's Mare Tranquillitatis touchdown in 1969 and Apollo 13's aborted mission in 1970 (and he was played by the actor Ed Harris in the 1995 movie Apollo 13).

When I interviewed him in 2001, Kranz decried America's abandonment of manned space exploration. "NASA is not living up to its responsibilities to make space more accessible," Kranz insisted. "If you compare the situation to the development of the U.S., where they moved from the East Coast to the Mississippi and then onwards, it's almost like we've halted at the Mississippi, and we just keep sending the explorers and scouts across, not the merchants, shop owners, and farmers."