Funny and sad how we take things for granted. One of the elements that will always make America great is our space program. We went from the Wright brothers to the moon in 66 years!! I’ll never forget reading about a New York Times reporter covering Orville and Wilbur testing their glider and then writing “after watching the Wright brothers I conclude that man will not fly for another 500 years.” Well he was only off by…..497 years! Now back to this moon dealio. The U.S. put men on the moon over 50 years ago and no country has matched that since. The U.S. did six moon landing missions successfully in 4 years and oddly enough the later missions attracted a small fraction of attention from the public because at that point it “was no big deal anymore.”

Seriously? Considering the technology available back then and how successful those landings were it was nothing short of a miracle. Even the Apollo 13 flight that did not go well came back with no loss of life. That brings us up to the recent landing of the rover Perserverance AND helicopter Ingenuity. Just the latest in a series of landings on Mars out of NASA over the decades. The pictures sent back so far of course are fascinating and hypnotic but over the years we always hear some bellyaching from politicians or the public about what a “waste of money” space exploration is. My response, are you f..king kidding me?! I’d rather money be spent on NASA than pissed away in those programs that seem to only benefit said politician. At least with the space program the technology that comes out of there trickles down to the general public in ways we probably don’t even think about…..GPS…HELLO. Plus the fact that watching those rockets blast off is badass. I have to do my time travel bit here, let’s go back 150 years and say to people living with no electricity, no indoor plumbing nor anesthia and say “hey, guess what, in the 21st century we will have vehicles on Mars and a taco chicken sandwich.” And their response would’ve been “we burn witches for that kind of talk.” That my friend is what makes America great in 2021.

Gunga, galunga
Garry