This morning, out doing my regular miles, I came across a lady pushing a stroller wearing a black sweatshirt/”hoodie”, on the front of which was “OCCUPY MARS” with a depiction of the red planet no larger than the characters. On the back it said “SpaceX”.
Cool. I had sort-of sworn off hoodies that don’t zip in the front (they’re such a pain to put on and take off), but I may have to make an exception for one of these.
Don’t get me wrong, Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill are personal heroes for me, for more than one reason each, and I was greatly inspired by their amazing achievements with Space Ship One, making Mike the first non-government astronaut ever.
Honestly, how could you NOT love an honest-to-god spaceship with a hatch latching mechanism from a junked minivan? This not only captures the best spirit of the Maker movement, but also Victor Korman’s excellent and prescient book Kings of the High Frontier, and, for that matter, Tom Swift, Tom Swift Jr ., and a whole slew of we-can-do-it “juvenile” science fiction from ages past, from what seems in retrospect like an alien, long-vanished culture. I loved it all.
But, for whatever reasons since Burt is no longer personally involved they don’t seem to be leading the drive much anymore. So it goes. If Elon Musk is going to do it instead of Richard Branson, I can live with that.
I see there are a thousand variations on-line, but SpaceX is doing it, not just talking about it. That’s cred you can’t come close to with words… that I can’t come close to with mine.
– Robert the Wombat