Sometime this morning it hit me: We’re going back to the Moon.
Just as suddenly it hit me: Fat chance.
What, realistically, are the chances that NASA can jump off its decades-long hamster wheel and do all the things that need doing in order to facilitate a return to the Moon? What, realistically, are the chances that the deeply divided American electorate will even attempt to see the thing through? What, realistically, are the chances we’ll actually make the move for Mars after a successful series of Moon missions?
Pretty much zero, zip and none.
We’ve got no imagination anymore. The last big idea was the promise of the 1960s. We actually went to the Moon. We declared War on Poverty. We thought that we could explore the outer limits while perfecting our inner selves. Didn’t happen. Look at the rhetoric these days: one side trumpets a vision for the future, the other loudly moans that we haven’t carried through the ideas of the past. The bulk of the populace voted for the ideas of the past in 2000. In 2004 the bulk of the population will vote for the promise of the future but not in sufficient numbers to declare a mandate. So, what will we do? We’ll sit still and spin our wheels in mud churned deep by bureaucratic inertia.
Even so, think of the possibilities! Space Elevators lifting larger and larger cargoes into near-Earth orbit waiting to be retrieved and hastened on their journey by lifting bodies constructed and fueled at Camp Liberty, Sea of Tranquility, the Moon. Within our lifetime the United States flag planted in the red dust of Mars. Regular orbital launches by ramjet powered craft hurled into exo-atmospheric flight by railguns. Too cool and yet very possible.
Will it happen? Like the Eagles making it to the big show, I can’t allow myself to hope. This may be a year or a decade or a generation of great achievement but I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s further to fall when we fail and higher to rise if we succeed.