burchismo

Monday, July 20, 2009

A NEW BEGINNING -- FORTY YEARS ON

One of the things that spurred me to start blogging again was the nearing of this day – the 40^th anniversary of the landing of the first human beings on the moon. Long-time readers of this blog can imagine the mixed feelings with which I contemplate the passing of four decades since Neil and Buzz took those first steps. On the one hand, there’s no denying the thrill of remembering the awesome achievement that put men on the moon. Just 66 years after the first heavier than air flight, and just a little more than two decades after the first war fought in part with ballistic missiles, our species managed to fling a tiny part of itself at least a little way into the vast ocean of space. The intensity of the effort of the ten years that led up to Apollo 11 has few parallels in human history, and almost nothing to compare in terms of the breadth of coordination it took and the audacity of its goal, combined with the fundamentally worthwhile nature of its achievement.

For all intents and purposes, it was done in the blink of an eye – and in the blink of an eye, it was all thrown away. Having built all the tools required to become a true space-faring species, we turned our back on the adventure and, instead, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars (far more than the cost of Apollo) and all of the decades since in a floundering descent into the corrupted political pig-trough that the US national space program has become. For thirty of the forty years that have passed since Apollo 11, private individuals have tried to work around the hulking roadblock NASA has become to real space development. For the first twenty years of that time, much was spent in the coin of blood sweat and tears with little to show for the effort in terms of the only thing that counts in the end – real flying hardware. But a little noted event last week marked the achievement of a meaningful milestone: SpaceX, a company that started from nothing and has built all of its hardware itself, had its first complete commercial success, launching the satellite of a paying customer into orbit with a rocket it designed and built itself from scratch.

The wreckage of the US national space program still lies in the road, but a way forward has now been blazed around that obstacle. Little by little, the human species will again begin to build momentum toward the stars.
GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:08 AM