Today is the last Space Shuttle flight for NASA’s Shuttle Discovery. It has been in operation for nearly three decades and is making its 39th launch at 4:50 pm EST. Of the rest of the Space Shuttles, Endeavour, is currently on for April 19 and shuttle Atlantis is tentatively scheduled to launch during the summer. Of the space shuttles there have been 132 launches.
Damn, that’s boring. When did space exploration become so boring? Why are we just building an International Space station? Sure there’s a lot of cool stuff on there, like rainbow detection monitors and earthquake cameras and stuff but why are we there? I thought Space exploration was supposed to be kick ass. The last 30 years have been pretty lackluster, not including the terrible tragedies NASA endured.
The baby-boomers had the moon landing and there was a ton of excitement about that. We’ve watched astronauts grow flies in space. Where are the super scientists creating nuclear powered super engines that can propel human exploration into Buck Roger’s type adventure? And where the hell is my frigging flying car anyway?
Not that I’d be any good at operating a flying car. I’m lucky enough to pilot my 11 year old Saturn on Chicago’s city streets. I’m just saying that Popular Mechanic’s magazine made some pretty bold statement’s years ago and I haven’t seen any results. Of course American’s aren’t ready for flying cars. We can’t even convince people to stop buying gas guzzling monster SUV’s. I suppose as soon and we can equate the flying car with a certain part of the male anatomy we’ll see some progress on that. “Dang, check out my flying ____!”
I bet you if I had a flying car I’d still be late for work. “Sorry boss, sky traffic was like… terrible, I guess?”
Oh, and the accidents would be terrible. Imagine all the worst driver’s you know careening about the sky haphazardly trying to get to Wal-Mart. All those left turn signals flashing away for no reason. It’d be a nightmare. And let’s face it; American’s just aren’t smart enough for piloting their own sky vehicles. Most would probably believe God was somehow holding them up because there’s no such thing as gravity, just God’s divine will. Some would probably go Kamikaze on Churches or Mosques or even Planned Parenthood clinics. Really, it would be a horror show. I’m suddenly glad there are no flying cars.
Back to NASA, I hope the next generation of space vehicles are cool and have the ability to broaden the imaginations of us Earth lubbers. Maybe that would spark a little more interest in Math and Science in American schools. It might also encourage us to look beyond our meager Earthly disagreements and start collectively exploring the universe around us. Imagine what we are capable of when we work together.
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