Here is an article by Sean Wilsey in which he combines NASA history with an account of his tour through modern NASA: The Next Giant Leap: Forty years ago this month, NASA achieved the greatest feat in history: landing two men on the surface of the moon. Today, NASA is planning a return—to the moon again, and then beyond to Mars—but first they need to reinvent, from scratch, how to get there. Oh, and their other problem: explaining what the hell it is we’re doing in space - GQ - July 2009 issue.

As July 20th approaches, I expect to see a lot of such articles comparing the NASA of today with what it was in 1969. I feel rather ambivalent about them. On the one hand, it's nice to see NASA and space getting some attention in the press. I can appreciate the enthusiasm of someone like Mr. Wilsey for space exploration and for NASA's Space Age accomplishments. On the other hand, such articles typically express the standard NASA is Space, Space is NASA attitude that became so dominant in the 1960s. Mr. Wilsey, for example, describes his experience of weightlessness on a ZERO G aircraft but he does not explain that ZERO-G is a private company independent of the agency. This could have led to a discussion of developments with commercial human spaceflight. Instead, a reader will most likely finish the article with the impression that the only thing going on today in space is NASA's attempt to repeat Apollo.

Also, as Rand Simberg points out in Gullible - Transterrestrial Musings, we can expect that most such articles will not attempt to poke holes in the thin defense of Constellation that is put up by NASA managers.