I grew up in the space age. Some of my favorite childhood memories involved being glued to a radio or TV, counting down toward zero. "We have ignition... We have liftoff! We have liftoff! All systems still go!" There was an excitement in the voices from Mission Control you now mainly hear when the underdog wins the World Series or Superbowl. It was a Big Deal. And every kid with the least bit of interest in space, especially those of us who through science fiction the best breakfast food around, knew we would get there. We couldn't wait.
Some of my favorite memories of childhood involve Dad getting me up in the middle of the night to watch a liftoff, or a splashdown. He loved them, and he know how much I loved them. One of the first model kits I recall building (with hep from Dad as it wasn't simple) was a helicopter lifting a Mercury capsule out of the water. It came complete with a little John Glenn. It was my pride and joy.
I was too young to even take note of Sputnik, but the collective national US memory and resultant fear was a palpable thing through my early childhood. This carried on throughout much of the 1960s as we seemed always to be playing catch up with the Soviets, who were first with a satellite, first with an animal in space, first with a man in space, first to orbit the Earth, first with a woman in space... But we beat them to the Moon. It was 1969. Vietnam. Hippies. Chicago. Not a comfortable year but... we landed on the Moon!
But after a few more trips to Luna, we just kind of gave up. We had been so focused on the Moon we had no plan for beyond. With everything else going on, there was no energy for one, and no will to develop one- much less spend the money. Oh, we messed around almost pointlessly a few years, but that was it.
I'd known from four or five years old that I would go to space and visit the Moon, if not live there a while. I was determined to get at least to Mars, and hopefully the stars. There was really no limit. But by the mid 1970s, such dreams were nearly dead. It was easier to get lost into science fiction and fantasy; it was clear we weren't going anywhere.
I kept hearing rumors about a space shuttle program. But by then I refused to hope. I managed to ignore the takeoff and first mission, but found myself glued to a TV with my wife, Nick Pomponio, and other friends when it came time for the shuttle landing. For them, it was just cool. But I felt a breeze fanning flames of hope from what I'd thought were dead coals. The fire was rekindled.
But we still had no real direction and little national will to do much with space technology. Eventually we let the Russians and anyone else who wanted it have whatever glory was left. Sure, we flew to the ISS and back, left some people there, did some experiments. But that was it. It was science, and space flight, but hardly space exploration or bringing space flight to the masses. I gave up again.
And then...
And then SpaceX. Thank God for Elon Musk. To quote Wikipedia,
"Historic achievements by SpaceX, among others, include the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket (Falcon 1) to reach orbit (28 September 2008); the first privately funded company to successfully launch (by Falcon 9), orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon) (9 December 2010); the first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the International Space Station (25 May 2012); and the first private company to send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (3 December 2013)."So what's SpaceX's current big goal? According to Forbes, via Wikipedia,
"SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Musk stated in June 2013 that he intends to hold off any potential IPO of SpaceX shares on the stock market until after the "Mars Colonial Transporter is flying regularly."I may get to go home yet.
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