At 8:02 am Pacific Time, Thursday July 16, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s We Choose the Moon project recreates the launch of the Apollo 11 moon rocket.  The interactive site will recreate the entire mission to the moon down to the minute, complete with status reports, images, 3D animations and even Twitter updates.  The site is very  slick and recreates the anticipation before a launch at the space center quite well.  You even hear the seagulls flying around the launchpad as you watch the rocket on waiting for liftoff.

This is about as close to the moon as we’re likely to get for quite some time since the national ‘let’s go to the moon again’ quagmire persists in spite of the fact that Nasa has no more spaceships to fly once the shuttle heads for the junkyard.  The International Space Station is quite possibly going to be dumped into the ocean in 2016 due to lack of interest.  But a space agency that can run radio-controlled cars on the surface of Mars is at least doing something with its money.