Space-X, Make Us Cool Again!

I turned 46 last week and that had me thinking about what I would have expected life to be like when I was younger. When I was 16, I could not have imagined I'd someday think 50 was right around the corner. Yet, here it is creeping up on me. I guess my biggest question to the powers that be is, "Where is all the cool stuff?"

Retired with No Upgrade!

When I was 16, people would fly between New York and London at supersonic speedy luxury on The Concorde. The graceful looking plane had such a sleek, long nose that they would have to lower it when they were landing so the pilots could see the runway below out their windows. Champagne at more than 1,000 miles an hour. What's not to like about that?

So, now that I'm 30 years older, imagine my dismay that not only did they retire the Concorde, which apparently still required tubes like old-timey televisions used to use. But, they haven't replaced it with anything. In 30 years, air travel has gotten slower, not faster. What's up with that?

Retired with No Upgrade!

What else was around when I was 16? We could go to space and back with The Space Shuttle! Wow, if we can send a plane/rocket into space and bring it back and land it on a runway in 1982 then by 2012 we'll probably be close to building the first version of the Enterprise to go explore new planets, right? Well, unfortunately not. Now if we want to go to the International Space Station we built, we have to hitch a ride with the Russians and hope they still feel like providing taxi service to us as Cranky Putin Pants takes over.

So, no pressure guys, but Space-X, our only hope of regaining coolness is pretty much you guys. If you aren't familiar with Space-X, this is a private company that has built a space launch system and even has a price list on their website to take things up into space. It's sort of like the Mayflower Moving of space, but more expensive. Well, if Mayflower built their own carbon fiber super high-tech trucks and launched them into space. If you have $10.9 million around and a desire to get something into space, all you have to do is visit http://www.spacex.com/. At 12:44 a.m. PST Tuesday, they are going to launch a test capsule and attempt to reach the International Space Station and dock it. They were orginally going to launch last Saturday, but a computer ended the launch one second before liftoff. Better to find out there is a problem one second before instead of one second after liftoff. If they are able to launch it tomorrow morning, we're back! If not, we'd better send Putin a case of Florida oranges, because that's the only thing lifting off from Florida for a while.

And Don't Even Get Me Started About Not Having a Flying Car Yet!