Today I put up a link to that video of SpaceX’s booster rocket returning to the launching pad like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was beyond amazing. It was preposterous. How could the control system of this rocket have it fall out of the sky like a stone, then brake and maneuver under power and stop in mid-air exactly at the docking station and be caught by a mechanical hand as if it were a ballpoint pen. It’s beyond technology it’s some kind of black magic.
Well, it did me good to see something positive online for the first time in years. Sure, it doesn’t really impact my life in any way that can be measured. I don’t even own any stock in SpaceX. And I don’t really think that going to Mars has any benefits for humans that could be identified in the next hundred years. But what I am seeing is men using their intelligence to do things and make things that have never been done or made before. And every time this happens the side effects from such an endeavor always produce benefits that no one had even considered. Computers are the side effects that accrued from trying to crack codes during WWII and building missiles and rockets. We needed machines that could do the ballistic calculations faster than humans could. If Musk manages to convince the US government to send a mission to Mars, I don’t doubt that the fallout from that project will be more useful than the information we get from going to Mars.
Humanity is a misbegotten collection of mostly psychotic apes. Every time I look online, I see examples of brutality, depravity and stupidity that should cure anyone of having hope for this world. But something like this gives me that rush of excitement and reminds me of what seemed possible back in the days when I was young. Instead of the drab, hopeless world that the Al Gores and Greta Thunbergs try to convince kids to despair about; where we eke out a miserable existence under pathetic wind turbines and solar panels, we could have a world where the world’s energy needs could be completely provided by any number of powerful technologies. Instead of the phony equity of fake scientists selected by racial and sexual quotas we could go back to a meritocracy where the best would be rewarded by the chance to achieve real breakthroughs in all the STEM applications.
Watching that rocket land on a dime in mid-air was like a shot of adrenaline. These things can still be done and they should be done. Hell, I would rather the US government had given SpaceX every penny of the 200+ billion dollars that they threw at the senseless and barbaric Ukraine war that we ginned up. If we had, we’d probably already be on Mars.
Okay, I know this was all just pure emotion. I let myself get caught up in that “Right Stuff” rah-rah feeling. It reminded me of the sense of wonder I felt reading all those science fiction stories that Heinlein wrote back in the stone age. And it has absolutely nothing to do with present day America. The land of illegal alien cannibals that we pay billions of dollars to invade our country. But for one shining moment it felt good.