How High Priced The Moon

Spencer insisted we knew more about space than we knew about the depths of the ocean... Repeatedly, slightly slurred and way too loud for a 6 AM street corner conversation. It was mostly the alcohol talking. He'd spent the night mooching free well drinks for players at downtown casinos by moving around to scam different cocktail waitresses.

But it was partly his Baptist upbringing. In his then current condition of drunken amateur theologian he equated NASA's manned space program moon landings with "Jacob's Ladder" story from Genesis... The original Stairway to Heaven.

Little did he know that spaceflight would be mothballed later the same morning... A casualty of the proposed 2011 federal budget.

"The truth is we were not on a sustainable path to get back to the moon," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a telephone conference call with the Washington Post. "We were neglecting investments in key technologies."

Les Paul, whose custom guitar is Gibson's all-time best seller, is also considered the inventor of multi-track recording, which allowed his partner Mary Ford to stack vocals like Imelda May did for the tribute at the 2010 Grammys with Jeff Beck.