Recently I shared a comic about the demise of the space program. We gave up. We lost two shuttle crews and then we threw in the towel and walked away. The only noticeable advances in aeronautical technology are for an overblown vacuum cleaner designed to kill people (the infamous F-35). We have become so paralyzed into inaction by our own mortality that we stopped trying for fear that we MIGHT stumble or fall again. Once upon a time, people dared. People invented and tinkered and adventured, even knowing that it may one day cost them their lives. We climbed mountains because they were there. We did things because they were hard, not because they were easy. Like in the comic, we put a man on the moon. And we did it with the computing power of a modern pocket calculator. We built airplanes at a time when the established scientific community vehemently declared that heavier than air flight was impossible. We have constantly made wondrous discoveries long after Lord Calvin imfamously said that everything worth discovering had already been discovered. So what happened? How did our curious soul get ripped from us? Is it loss or failure? I was always taught that if you failed or stumbled, you picked yourself up, dusted yourself off and kept at it. I talk to people about the idea of colonizing space. We have the technology, we have the money, and we have the need. This planet is being stretched to the breaking point trying to sustain our cancerous growth, and it wont be able to do it for much longer. Every time that someone tells me that its a pipe dream, or that it isnt worth the time, I get angrier than words can express. Not worth our time? And when weve screwed up this planets ability to sustain life beyond what we can fix, will it still be a worthless endeavor? Will we look bad on the time when we could have and say to ourselves we should have? Last one left, turn out the lights.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 12:48:06 +0000
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