Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Shuttle Endeavour is safe on the ground

But the Endeavour landed in California at Edwards Air Force Base; it should have been here in Florida, but it was too windy to land.
Crazy!
The spacecraft flies through space at a gazillion miles per hour and can't come in to land here because it’s too windy?
And the wilder part is that in order to get it back here it always cost around 1.8M to fly it home to Cape Canaveral.
I know that I'm no rocket scientist, but doesn't that just sound wrong to you?

Actually, the shuttle is a glider and is propelled through the air into orbit by thrusters.
And in order for it to land it must glide back to earth similarly to be able to reach earth's orbit and it hasn’t any power for re-entry. It really does sort of fall to earth like a rock or meteor.

Who still thinks we have come close to Star Trek or Star Wars with our space program?
I suppose even with the space station expanding we have quite a ways to go.
The 21st Century and we all imagined that by now we would be much, much further along.
Does anyone remember why we had wanted space exploration to begin with?
I do recall JFK predicting us landing on the moon before the end of his decade, and we did six years after he was killed, August of 1969, but I cannot remember why.
But the last nearly forty years what has really happened?
Man in space is not anywhere where I thought it would be.

Let your imagination go wild for a few seconds…Think that we would be vacationing in outer space by now, and driving air-land vehicles that would take us as fast as the shuttle takes off to any planet we care to go in time for dinner. I guess that’s the Jetson’s TV show, or maybe a slice of a segment of Lost in Space.
But honestly how many of you out there didn’t think by now that by a push of a button would turn your car into a plane or boat, and that would be something so commonplace like using your cell phone or using a computer by a touch screen, which is possible now?
I bet any of us that are children of the so-called Boomer generation who truly believed and rightfully so that anything should be possible. Just when I think about all that has happened since I was a child.
And most of these believers are responsible for the modern day inventions that are so ordinary today, dreamers we were called by the ones who were kind,or crazy by the non believers.

Just think about any of the daily things we use that we take for granted someone had to go that extra mile of possible public humiliation to take the chance to try and think of what we now call euphemistically thinking out of the box.
Try to put yourself in the place of all those inventors that you studied in school like Edison, Franklin, Bell, Fulton and the rest what types of people would have listened to their wild ideas?
Benji Franklin why on earth would you try and have your kite be hit by lightening you have got to have a death wish!
Edison had had his own bright ideas but those filaments must have been tough to fit into that glass jar.
Bell, what’s with those tin cans and string; how old are you, really?
Fulton, why don’t you just paddle that boat; why must you have a fire and water for steam, what’s with that one, weirdo?

Anyway, you get the idea.
We never know when anyone who seems not all there with wild ideas really has something, do we?
So the next time you pooh, pooh a friend or loved one’s idea stop take a breath and say wow you might have something there! ( And maybe tell them to repeat it again so you are sure it's not too off the wall).
Then tell them to go, run, don’t walk, and get a patent quickly before some other crazy steals it!

On that unusual note I will say good night sleep tight, and if you dream of an idea write it down quickly and get that patent too!

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