July 20, 2019
50 Years
It's been 50 years since Neil Armstrong became the first person from this planet to set foot on the moon. A mere 7 years prior, an American president set this most epic of endeavors as a national goal, in the same year the first American Orbited the Earth. it should be noted that U.S. rockets were not particularly reliable at the time...
...yet in less than 7 years our civilization overcame immense technical hurdles to put 2 men on our nearest satellite. 10 more would follow.
In 7 years, we had figured out how to do it reliably 6 out of 7 times and the reason for the one failure was quickly figured out and corrected for the subsequent missions.
Oh and we saved that crew too.
Now with the hard part done and over and a sevenfold increase in the time it took to do the hard part, one might expect that we could now vacation at 6 Flags on the Moon.
Instead, 50 years later the moon is adorned with...6 flags (one of which fell over).
50 years.
We have not been able, as a society to do what we did then.
Keep in mind that then we were fighting a land war in Asia, staring down the most implacable evil of the 20th century (which at the time had over 20,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us and defined peace as an absence of opposition to communism) and we were engaging in the final heavy lifting in expanding the American dream to all races. We were skeet shooting, chewing gum, talking, and horse-diving at the same time.
And yet, here we are.
Looking at old movies, of when we were young and free and full of hope.
Who robbed us of our future and how were we so foolish as to let them?
At least today we can look to Musk and others to pick up the dusty, forlorn baton...
...50 years late.
It's been 50 years since Neil Armstrong became the first person from this planet to set foot on the moon. A mere 7 years prior, an American president set this most epic of endeavors as a national goal, in the same year the first American Orbited the Earth. it should be noted that U.S. rockets were not particularly reliable at the time...
...yet in less than 7 years our civilization overcame immense technical hurdles to put 2 men on our nearest satellite. 10 more would follow.
In 7 years, we had figured out how to do it reliably 6 out of 7 times and the reason for the one failure was quickly figured out and corrected for the subsequent missions.
Oh and we saved that crew too.
Now with the hard part done and over and a sevenfold increase in the time it took to do the hard part, one might expect that we could now vacation at 6 Flags on the Moon.
Instead, 50 years later the moon is adorned with...6 flags (one of which fell over).
50 years.
We have not been able, as a society to do what we did then.
Keep in mind that then we were fighting a land war in Asia, staring down the most implacable evil of the 20th century (which at the time had over 20,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us and defined peace as an absence of opposition to communism) and we were engaging in the final heavy lifting in expanding the American dream to all races. We were skeet shooting, chewing gum, talking, and horse-diving at the same time.
And yet, here we are.
Looking at old movies, of when we were young and free and full of hope.
Who robbed us of our future and how were we so foolish as to let them?
At least today we can look to Musk and others to pick up the dusty, forlorn baton...
...50 years late.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
10:58 PM
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