A Golden Spike...

Image Source: Interesting Engineering

Having had the pleasure of lunch in San Antonio with a good friend and scientist I admire along with his wife Alicia and mine (Cassandra), Mark pointed out STEM is difficult, it takes effort to master it and good scientists are usually busy doing...GOOD science. Popular shows have their place in framing the importance of science in our daily affairs, but the best most of us can hope for is a general appreciation for that import, and a vision not to hinder its growth and continuance. 

We used to do great things.

Then, we gave voice to a warped skepticism; a clear evidence of the abhorred vacuum of nature being filled by the inexperienced, the uneducated: the loud, obnoxious nincompoops with a microphone and an audience of willfully ignorant malcontents that sadly: vote. In return for this political Baal worship, they are rewarded with policies against their, and the country's long term best interests.

There are some, still to this day, who doubt the moon landing ever happened. Never having lived during the era or too young to have witnessed it for themselves, their evidence are web articles of dubious expertise and sourcing; Internet videos that can be fabricated on laptops and uploaded to web sites NOW: neither sites, laptops or URLs existed during those days.

The technology we use today is a direct spin off from the space program. The integrated circuit was initially developed due to reducing rocket payloads. Newtonian physics is what we use at the moment to get satellites or astronauts into orbit. Our 238-year experiment in self-government seems to work on cartoon physics at the moment.

We've driven a golden spike into the trail leading inexorably into the future leading to the first manned landing on Mars; the mining of asteroids and Helium 3 on a moon base and more of us having the "Overlook Effect" as we become a space faring species. It will be a paradigm shift technologically, politically and sociologically. Only myopia, fear, draconian budget cuts, conspiratorial and magical thinking will drive us into another inexorable, tragic direction: back to tribalism, the caves and dissolution of the nation state.

We used to do great things. Maybe we can do it...again.