It's about time.
I'm completely unsure whether this needs to be blogged on this page, but I don't care.
Fifty-five years ago today Neil Armstrong set his two feet on a place other than Earth, the first time any human being had done so. He was the first, but he was not the last.
Then the novelty wore off. just when we were getting the hang of getting there and back, and proving that we could even handle a space emergency of epic proportions, just when we were starting to do some serious science ...
We quit. We got bored. Space flight was no longer a 'new' thing. Ho-hum.
It's passed time we went back into space, and I mean not just messing around in the wading pool of Low Earth Orbit. Richard Branson and others want to make that the playground of the rich.
Well, early adopters always have been people that had money to throw at the newest thing. That's okay. When the costs come down, then us middle-class folks can enjoy.
To that end a certain Mr. Musk has been working on getting us back into space, effectively 'on the cheap' (as compared to how the government plan works), with the thought of moving out of LEO and onward back to the moon, then outward to mars and other places that might be colonized. His detractors (and distracters) of course are beating him up for being so bold as to be a non-government business to try to do so.
Too bad, so sad. More power to him, I say.
I ran across something ... Not true. I went looking for it. Chaos Manor, formerly a column in Byte magazine, then a website. Byte has gone away, but JerryPournelle.com is still present, even though both he and his wife Roberta have passed on. One of the pages that is still alive is:
How to Get to Space (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/gettospace.html)
where he details an X-program to get there. I encourage you to visit and see what else can be found. It is two decades or more old, but since it has only been fairly recently that there has been any sort of effort, it is still pertinent.
As it happens, Mr. Musk has followed much of it and has proceeded to create exactly what Dr. Pournelle had in mind, albeit with variations. With the result of Space-X and the various Falcon Single Stage to Orbit vehicles taking over what the Shuttle can no longer do. And doing it more cost-effectively.
And folks are kicking him in the teeth as he does it.
He has taken what he has been given and multiplied it. He started with nearly nothing and he has now made more than a name for himself. And he has proved the adage that if you're successful people will be doing their best to beat you down because you bested them.
Your turn.
All you who criticize these start-from-scratch successful folk, quit criticizing and do better, IF you can. At very least try to do as well. If you get even part-way towards a big goal, you will be far better off than you are by yelling at the successes out there. Be the ones the "Poor-Me"s yell at instead.
You can be bigger that they are. You can be more successful than they are. You can be in a better position to help others along the way than they are. You can be more generous than they are.
Yes, You CAN!
