I Don’t Need These Russians 114
was some kind of mistake,” Elon said. “I expected to find
that they were well on their way and that we’d have to
figure out something else to do. But there was nothing at
all.”^278
“Hey, let’s do space,” Ressi shouted. They asked them-
selves why nothing had happened within the area since the
last time we traveled to the Moon. “In the popular literature
of the time, they expected that we would have a Moon base,
a Mars base, that we would be exploring the solar system
in a significant way by now,” Elon said.^57
One problem was that we were no longer motivated
by a military threat. US citizens used to be afraid of a
communist base on the Moon and of nuclear weapons
orbiting the Earth. A military threat motivated the earlier
space programs. The early rockets were originally designed
to deliver nuclear weapons and spy satellites. This threat
motivated people to make sacrifices they wouldn’t have
made in a time of peace. The last flight of the Apollo
program occurred in July 1975, and the goal of the mission
was to dock the Apollo capsule with the Russian Soyuz
capsule. It marked the end of the space race between the
rivaling countries. A military threat didn’t exist anymore.
Another problem was that we didn’t believe rockets
were as exciting as we did in the 1960s. No one wanted to
explore and expand beyond Earth anymore. “Spend billions
of dollars to land an astronaut on Mars? What a waste of
money!”
If there was no military threat and if rockets were not
exciting anymore, why would we risk our lives in poten-