Space, the final frontier...To boldly go where no man or woman has gone before.
The irony is not lost on me. Thanks to the pandemic,we have been locked down and quarantined. Now, some states are opening up and unleashing the heretofor cooped up masses.
While we work to once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, we are seriously on Mars - checking out the red planet more seriously than ever before. Manned flight to Mars is on the drawing board, private enterprise is doing more for space exploration than we ever thought possible. Reusable launch vehicles are now a reality and another moon shot in the works. Once again, we have something new and exciting to keep our minds off the failures brought on by the pandemic.
Do you remember this?
That song - in its original version - is one I
heard on the car radio (in that infamous Mustang convertible) on the day Armstrong walked
on the moon. I was on Hwy 92 having just crossed the San Mateo bridge and headed to Half Moon Bay to meet the gang. Call it a Twilight Zone moment - the song was not released nor even completed when I heard it. I looked for it for months as John Stewart was and is a favorite of mine.
Space exploration has been on my mind since I lived in Pueblo Colorado when my folks and I went to the drive in movietheater and watched Forbidden Planet. That was it for me - I was hooked. Then I saw The Day The Earth Stood Still on TV. The politics of the time went right over my head but boy was that robot Gort cool. In fact, the guy who owned the company that my late wife and I worked for in the early seventies nicknamed me Gort.
Next came Star Trek and then Star Wars and all of the one off movies - including my all time fave space opera, The Last Starfighter.
We launched Voyager and that one is still out there. Then there is the SETI Institute - America's only organization whose very existance is dedicated to searching for life in the universe.
Space has been on people's minds since the days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon - even longer. For all of our flaws,
we humans are a curious race. Not curious as odd but curious as inquisitive. What is out there? Who is out there? What is our place in the grand scheme of things?
So here we are - back in a space race and our timing could not be better. After being locked down for a year, we are raring to go. Private companies are building the vehicles. Our resident crazy South African is building a vehicle to get us to Mars and that Branson guy may as well. The excitement is building and should continue to do as we press on. Every milestone we reach should fuel the fire within us to keep exploring. We may even run into this little guy once again.
If nothing else, I hope this weeks blog captures some of the excitement I feel about space exploration. These are strange times we live in - and the times they are a changin'. See ya next week for the next 8 on 1 blog as we get back into the swing of things. Conrad picked this week's topic and be sure to see what the other bloggers have to say. I'll see ya next week, same bat time - same bat channel.
Woo hoo! I've always loved space exploration. Always! And I knew from many past convos that you have always loved it, too. This topic was a gift to the two of us!
I can understand and even support placing satellites in space for our various needs but, always wonder if the money spent on trips to other planets and other explorations could not be used for other more pressing purposes on earth.
Woo hoo! I've always loved space exploration. Always! And I knew from many past convos that you have always loved it, too. This topic was a gift to the two of us!
ReplyDeleteI can understand and even support placing satellites in space for our various needs but, always wonder if the money spent on trips to other planets and other explorations could not be used for other more pressing purposes on earth.
ReplyDelete