I may have been premature

I may have been slightly premature with my proclamation that the space race was dead in my blog post from six years ago. What I didn't know was that some of the same nerds like me who were inspired by the original race to the moon were billionaires with the same dreams.

The commercialization of spaceflight has grown in leaps and bounds, and you have investors like Paul Allen, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and more I am sure that they are showing us that commercial space travel is possible.

Space X is doing everything they possibly can to drive the cost of lifting materials into space down. They have reusable boosters that land themselves back at a designated landing spot. It can then be refurbished and reused. They are working on manned capsules and with the technology they currently have they are being paid to deliver goods to the International Space Station.

Elon Musk has everyone thinking large again, he is talking about returning to the moon. He wants to set up colonies on Mars. He has big plans... to say the least.

So the question is, how do we get the excitement that he and his employees show about science and rocketry and all that goes along with it spread into the school children of today?

That I do not know. I wish I did. Unfortunately there is too much static in the air, with politics and the social divide in this country. Is it possible that one of these giants of commerce starts some club that grade school children could participate in? Something that would excite them, make them feel as though they are part of the movement to the stars.

I wish I knew someone who could pass this idea on and perhaps make it happen. That would be a great thing for all of us. But as for now I think it is all parents job to push their children to dream and help them become excited about learning.

May or may not happen, but I'm still dreaming that it can....

The Space Race is Dead!

Lately we have been asking Alysse what she wants to do with her life. We get some blank stares, and a quick “I don’t know”. Which is probably true, since she isn’t quite 13 yet. But should she know?

I realized that I knew what I wanted to be from the time I was in second grade! An astronaut! Oh yeah, and I almost made it, and then reality set in.

But what that desire made happen was my interest in all things mechanical, which in turn made me do fairly well in math and science. Which means that I can do a geometric proof that proves that everything I have is due to NASA?

So here it is my second blog post and I am already going to say something political. I will try to be non-controversial, and I won’t even mention political parties. But I really think that our politicians are bungling this whole space exploration thing.

My reasoning is this, we used our government to subsidize and make our space program one of our greatest achievements. It inspired me, and probably a whole bunch of folks to want to be astronauts, and in the end we all became technical nerds and engineers. But the return on investment is measurable, in technology as well as intellectual power.

However, our politicians have now deemed it a waste of money. It’s OK to spend billions in military spending to occupy foreign lands. It’s acceptable to spend billions to bail out foreign banks. It’s acceptable to bail out companies that were supposed to be working in the “Capitalistic” fashion, and then these same companies used the money to pay bonuses.

So we are left hitching rides from the Russians, and the Chinese are doing all of the same things that we did 50 years ago. So where does that leave us? What inspires our youth? Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian? Ask these same children and young adults who Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin are, and I can almost guarantee that you will get a blank look.

So if the fact that we spend more money on subsidizing foreign governments than space exploration upsets you, maybe you should send your congressman an email, and let them knows that we need to do something to inspire our children to greater heights. Literally and figuratively.