But wait a minute. This same vision was already achieved for one pioneering junkyard owner and as a teenager I watched every blast off for sixteen weeks in 1979. Of course that was only on a now-pretty-much-forgotten corny sci-fi TV show called "Salvage 1" starring Andy Griffith. Unlike his small town sheriff show from the 60s and his later country lawyer show of the 90s, this one wasn't so successful lasting just sixteen episodes.
Andy Griffith played Harry Broderick a white Fred Sanford of sorts who dreams of using spare parts to build a rocket in order to retrieve and resell abandoned stuff left behind on the moon by the Apollo missions. Though the idea someone, pretty much working on his own and with his own resources, could construct and operate a reusable rocketship was, well, totally wacky fiction back then. But this morning, Jeff Bezos, having arguably a bit more in the way of "resources" than ol' Harry, did just that.
Who would have thunk it? I know I wouldn't of if you asked me when I got off on this simple, naïve fantasy show forty two years ago.