RAND SIMBERG: IT’S HIGH TIME FOR A NEW SPACE POLICY. “Apollo was a spectacular success, both in terms of winning the Cold-War battle and (a secondary goal, vigorously pursued by Texan Vice President Lyndon Johnson) in creating a ‘Marshall Plan’ for the industrialization of the American South, with new high-tech activities in Houston, northern Alabama, and central Florida, among other places. But in terms of actually opening up the space frontier, it was nothing short of catastrophic. We have spent hundreds of billions on it over the years, to send a few hundred government employees into space, at a cost of over a billion dollars a flight. And in July, with the last flight of the Shuttle, we won’t even be able to continue to do that.”