This is CBS, I on the World.

I'm John Batchel.

The Earth-Moon System, the United States of America, NASA, the U.S. government, ready for the moon.

But Bob Zimmerman, he keeps the website behind the black.

Bob, the lunar program is a puzzle to me now because

it involves elements of NASA's SLS and elements of SpaceX, and after that I get lost. Your

opinion. Good evening to you. Good evening, John. Well, the headline of my essay that I wrote

yesterday on Behind the Black, I think says it all. Let me quote the headline.

An American government program to get to the moon is simply not necessary.

If we let Americans do it, we should let Americans do it on their own.

And I come at this, John, as a historian, looking back at the past.

From the first two centuries in the United States, we had no government programs to do

these kind of things.

In fact, people didn't want them.

Americans were all for exploration and pushing things forward, but they wanted Americans

to decide where to explore and push forward.

They didn't want the government doing it, and they didn't care if America was not first, like getting to the South Pole or the North Pole.

They didn't care if an American got there first.

It really didn't matter to Americans at all.

Our prestige was not based on achieving these stunts.

Actually, our prestige was established by what the country stood for, which is life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness and the idea that the citizen is sovereign.

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