I watched the Apollo missions as a child. In my teens and twenties I watched the space shuttle missions happen as if they had become second nature. But still, I was one of the skeptics. By the 90s, while my friends thought that progress was so aggressive that by the year 2000 we'd be going places in flying cars, I kept telling them that these things don't just happen overnight.
It's not as if the year 2000 was going to be some sort of barrier that we cross and suddenly we're in the future. I kept saying, it's just another year, and just like the 80s brought incremental changes from the 70s and the 90s did the same thing from the 80s. Y2K would not see significant progress either. And I was right. Unfortunately, I was too right because even I did not believe we'd still be just talking about a manned Mars mission in 2020. It's just downright embarrassing now.
With all our computing prowess, the scientists that landed men on the moon would laugh at us. They'd have had a mission to Mars back then if they had our computing power, IMO. Let's GO already!!! Every day that passes and our technology advances brings more and more risk to our survival by keeping all our eggs in one basket. We need a self-sufficient outpost that will assure our survival from ourselves, if nothing more. The world is not getting any safer.
It's not as if the year 2000 was going to be some sort of barrier that we cross and suddenly we're in the future. I kept saying, it's just another year, and just like the 80s brought incremental changes from the 70s and the 90s did the same thing from the 80s. Y2K would not see significant progress either. And I was right. Unfortunately, I was too right because even I did not believe we'd still be just talking about a manned Mars mission in 2020. It's just downright embarrassing now.
With all our computing prowess, the scientists that landed men on the moon would laugh at us. They'd have had a mission to Mars back then if they had our computing power, IMO. Let's GO already!!! Every day that passes and our technology advances brings more and more risk to our survival by keeping all our eggs in one basket. We need a self-sufficient outpost that will assure our survival from ourselves, if nothing more. The world is not getting any safer.