2017: A Space Idiocy

The full title of [Stanley] Kubrick’s famous flick was 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that year—33 years into the future to Kubrick—there are colonies on the moon, an expedition en route to Jupiter, and a really far-out sci-fi concept: Pan American Airways still exists. The sequel was set in 2010, and depicted a world in which the United States, Russia, and China all launch gigantic manned spaceships to Jupiter. Now it’s 2017 and nothing remotely like this is in prospect. There will be no expeditions to the outer planets, to say nothing of a manned landing on Mars, absent a propulsion breakthrough. I’d be happy if Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy simply works, which would return space access back to where it was 50 years ago, when the big rockets of the Apollo program were flying. Merely putting expendable rockets into the sky—something done routinely and flawlessly a half-century ago—has become an impossible goal for today’s process-and-delay obsessed government. . . .