Thirty-six years ago today, John F. Kennedy’s goal of sending a man to the moon, and returning him safely to the earth within the decade, achieved a key milestone, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gently set their lunar excursion module (named “Eagle”) on to the rocky, and dusty, surface of the moon. They had yet to “return safely to the earth,” but they would, a few days later.

Unfortunately, while many at the time believed that this was just the beginning of many such explorations, ones that would establish bases on the moon, and send humans beyond, to Mars and perhaps other places (the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey had been released the year before, featuring a rotating space station in low earth orbit, a Pan Am space transport to reach it, a lunar base, and manned mission to Jupiter all occurring in that seemingly distant year), the program was already ending. The goal had never really been to open up space, so much as to win a race against the Soviets, to demonstrate our technological superiority, as a proxy battle in the Cold War between democracy and totalitarianism (sadly, it wasn’t viewed as a war between capitalism and socialism, else we might have taken a more promising approach). But with the knowledge that we were winning that race, and the budget pressures of Johnson’s Great Society and the Vietnam war, the decision had been made years before to end procurement of long lead items necessary to advance much beyond a few trips to the lunar surface.

Only six missions would actually be successfully performed (Apollo XIII didn’t get to the moon), with the last one just three-and-a-half years later, in December of 1972. Some of the leftover hardware would go toward the Skylab program in 1974, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, whose thirtieth anniversary occurred just a few days ago. After that, there were no flights into space by Americans until 1981, when the first Shuttle flight occurred–a six-year hiatus.

It’s become common wisdom now that the Shuttle was a mistake, and indeed it was, but not for the reasons that many think. And unfortunately, so was Saturn, in that it didn’t provide an affordable or sustainable means of opening up space. But we’re misreading the lessons of that past, because we view Apollo as successful, and the reason for that success as Saturn, so many today want to turn their back on the Shuttle, and return to what they view as a proven method–putting capsules up on large expendable launch vehicles.

While it is past time to retire the Shuttle, it’s a profound logical error to attempt to extrapolate to a general class (reusable space transports) from a single flawed example, and somehow conclude that they are intrinsically a bad idea. Shuttle was a good idea in concept (a reusable vehicle, flown often), but it failed in execution, because we weren’t willing to spend the money in its development that would have been necessary in order to make it fully reusable, or operable.

And while it did achieve Kennedy’s (narrow) goal, in terms of opening up space Apollo was in fact a failure, and replicating its approach with modern hardware is likely to be as well, because throwing away launch vehicles is an intrinsically bad way to perform large-scale space activities, and to become a spacefaring nation, and no number of design concepts will get around that fact. Until we learn the true lessons of history, our government space program will continue to disappoint those of us who desire great things from it, and who want to go ourselves.

Fortunately, though, unlike the 1960s, we can now see a means by which we can do so without having to hope for bureaucrats to make the right decisions as to how to spend taxpayer money. Before too many more Apollo XI anniversaries roll by, I suspect that there will be many non-NASA personnel on the moon, visiting it with their own money, for their own purposes. And they won’t be getting there in little capsules on large vehicles, that are thrown away after a single use.

But for all that, it was still a monumental achievement, and one of the greatest events in the history of the universe. Go celebrate it properly tonight.