I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up a supply of Jake’s sliced cheese and to get a bag of Alpo for Mutt. I have been feeding cats for years and buying food for them, and you can buy a bag of cat food that will last cats a month or so, but a medium size dog will go through a bag of food in no time flat. Mutt just appeared at my house two weeks ago and took up with me. He is a good dog, clean and house trained. He is well mannered riding in the car and is an effective guard dog, holding visitors in their cars until I come out to tell him to let them get out and come in. I figure he must have been lost in some manner and I have asked around, but no one has shown up to claim him.
I did not need any gas, so I parked beside the store in front of the drive in garage where Jake did minor auto repair before automobiles became so computer dependent and where Jake still fixes flats. I went inside and said hello to Jake who was bagging groceries for an old lady I do not know. Mister Johnson was sitting over by the pot belly stove carving on a piece of pine wood. My friend Bob Havershold was there along with Hermann Spencer and his son Dwayne. Dwayne has been in school it seems forever, but I hear he will be graduating come spring with a law degree. It’s not as though we have a shortage of lawyers in this country, but Dwayne is a pretty good kid just the same.
Bob was holding forth with an opinion as I walked over and Mister Johnson was paying attention to his carving. Hermann was sampling a coke with his back to the pot belly stove and Dwayne was opening a pack of cookies. Bob was saying that there were not many people around who could tell you about the uppermost political issues on people’s minds in 1927, but most anyone could tell you that Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. That should give you some idea of the importance of the current second guessing and sour grapes over the just passed election.
Bob has been a big science fiction fan most of his life and he has been keeping up with the recent news on the X Prize and the race to get privately financed commercial craft into space. Bob thinks NASA is a spent force and believes the next advances in space flight are going to be coming from private ventures such as the race to get a non-government craft into space to claim the ten million dollar X Prize offered by Peter Diamandis. The most recent news is that, now SpaceShipOne, a project bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft Corp. cofounder Paul Allen, has claimed the ten million dollar prize, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group transportation, entertainment and communications corporation has signed an agreement to license the SpaceShipOne technology for commercial space flight. Actor William Shatner who portrayed television sci-fi series Star Trek captain James Kirk in the original production has signed to be one of the first passengers when the project launches in 2008.
Bob insists the recent election and the issues that were so important to the candidates and their supporters will have been forgotten as will the carping over vote counting and perceived fraud in a few weeks, but the advent of real space flight is a phenomenon that will change human history. Just like in 1927, no one will remember or care about the political issues of the day, but everyone will remember the men who showed us how to reach out and touch the stars.
Dwayne is an enthusiastic sci-fi fan in his own right having grown up watching the Star Wars movies, but he takes a slightly different perspective. After all, Dwayne has been studying toward a law degree and he has some ambition to get into politics down the road. Dwayne reminded Bob that the first man to place a footprint on the moon was sent there by a government funded and developed project that was very much the product of the political concerns of the day. Had it not been for the fact that the old Soviet Union had put an object into space and was seen as far ahead in the effort to expand influence into space, the United States government might never announced landing a man on the moon as a goal worth achieving.
Bob was ready to agree that government financed effort had played an important part in kick starting the space venture, but he says NASA has been floundering for decades. Even though there are obviously very dedicated and enthusiastic men and women attached to NASA, the public and political backing for reaching for the stars simply is not there. That is the reason Bob believes the race for space now belongs to private entrepreneurs like Peter Diamandis, Richard Branson and Paul Allen. These are men willing to risk their own capital in the expectation of a return on investment. There is no enthusiasm of support for government funding of space ventures.
Hermann joined in that the government already has too many commitments here on Earth to be spending billions more on pie in the sky space ventures. Bob pounced on that sentiment by saying his point was made. The average American simply has no enthusiasm for going back to the moon. People like Branson and William Shatner have that enthusiasm and they are the ones who should be out in space while those who have no interest in space stay here on Earth where they belong. Bob likes Peter Diamandis favorite quote, “The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.”
Mister Johnson looked up from his piece of pine. “I guess I been here on this earth so long I wouldn’t feel right comfortable any place else at my age,” he said. “But if you younger folks think you’d like to be roaring around up there in your space ships, I hope it happens for you. I truly do.”
END
