Space-X successfully launched US astronauts back into space on an American spacecraft for the first time in ten years.
Regardless of whether any practical goals for our space program currently exist it’s a morale boost for Americans to know that we still have the right stuff when it comes to technology. As an American who as a boy who watched the Apollo 11 landing and saw it as science fiction coming to life I’m thrilled to see a visionary like Musk making technological breakthroughs reality.
At least a small victory amid the chaos and stupidity we are surrounded by.
I had to become numb, to shut down my emotions when Barak Obama changed the tasking of NASA from exploration to Muslim outreach (yes literally) and later shut down US manned launch capability with no planned replacement. In 1969 as the mood landings were occurring if I had wondered where we would be 51 years later in 2020 and you told me that we had just barely regained human low earth orbit capability, I would have been horrified. But there is a definite glimmer of hope. At least until the ultra-science-genius Dims get back in power and shut it down… Read more »
Tom, I posted this just because I needed one positive thing to contrast the boundless dysfunction and just plain evil that fills the headlines. Good for Elon. Maybe with a technological businessman on the loose we’ll actually start looking at important projects. Would be good for someone besides federal bureaucrats to be investigating nuclear power generation. I’ll try not to get too negative. It’s not good for the kids.
I understand and I hope too. But the observed trajectory of 50+ years since I was adult enough to observe doesn’t extrapolate well.
If this were a SF book, there could be a close race between a group putting together an interstellar colonization vessel targeting an earth like planet 6 light years away pitted against the growing forces of chaos. I really don’t believe that this country is going to make it. Maybe the country can fragment with pockets saved against the insanity.
Your area of the country is gone, ground zero.
Yeah, the Northeast is pretty horrible. Unfortunately the grandkids live here. I’ll be retiring soon and maybe I can find a corner of the country where a brighter future is possible. Then I’ll have to figure out a way to lure them there.
If we had kept on as we were going, we’d be mining the asteroid belt today and have colonies on both the Moon and Mars.
The benefits of the Apollo program in technological offshoots amounts to trillions of dollars.
It’s good to see someone besides the federal government trying to push technology forward. Maybe this Musk fellow can do us some good and start making things in the US again.