I must admit, after watching the ‘chopsticks’ catch the booster – A rapidly falling 15 story building high structure, I feel Elon Musk might have my flying car delivered before I die after all. It’s a wonderful moment for a Science Fiction writer to be alive. Optimus (Flexible Frank?) driverless cabs, neural-link, Going to Mars to settle… it literally is the stuff of the sf of my youth. It is interesting that the army of government bureaucrats are trying their level to stop it. I suppose short-sighted stupidity is the defining characteristic of these people, but it is just so mind-numbingly myopic as to defy belief.
The US – and indeed the world, should be bathing in some this reflected glory, catching the optimism, the spirit of the Golden Age of sf – the age of heroic engineers, and ‘Can Do’. The fact that a lot of people are doing their best to ignore it, or denigrate it, speaks volumes about the mess our society is in. There are too many people who would rather rule in hell, than not be in power in heaven, methinks.
Engineering ‘solution finding’ can do stories – Murray Leinster and Robert Heinlein spring to mind are going to get a boost from this (Yes, CLOUD-CASTLES was a Heroic Engineer story – my timing has always been rubbish). It’s something I can be glad about, because I like writing those, and feel engineers a seriously undervalued profession.
I know: we’re sitting on the potential eve of various forms of destruction. But I cannot but hopeful for our children and children’s children in future where humans look at the impossible and say ‘is that the best you’ve got?
We will become interplanetary. We will reach the stars. We’ll get flying cars too. Ad Astra!
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “Ad Astra”
Laudato Si, Ad Astra
A tribute to Eugene Shoemaker. NASA did a probe crash on the moon and it contained some of his ashes.
There’s a great live version but Hellfest keeps it within the whole set and blocks any cutting out of it.
Anyway, just thinking of Floor’s ending makes me teary eyed.
Day job is working on the Lunar Gateway space station. Working on a lunar project was one thing that drew my wife and I to Houston to work on the then-new Space Shuttle in 1979. We figured it had been only ten years since we first visited – we were going back real soon.
Real soon slowly morphed into Real Soon Now. Worked on the Shuttle off and on through the 1980s until the program ended in 2011. Decided that was it, left space, worked in other industries over the next ten years and was planning to quit the day job in January 2022 and retire to write books full time. Then in July 2021 I get cold-called and offered a slot working on Lunar Gateway.
What I am doing now is the science fiction I was reading in the 1960s. Think A Fall of Moondust or Space Ship Galileo. Or the 1950s Murray Leinster stuff. Helping design a space station out at the Moon. A while back I was asked to review the requirements for the Lunar mobility vehicles – Moon buggies and Moon buses, EVA space suits. Again, mind blown at the thought that this was SF when I was a kid, now it is really happening, and I am part of it. Even if I am just one spear carrier in a cast-of-thousands epic, I am part of it.
I can die happy now. Thanks, Elon Musk. It would all be just talk if you had not gotten NASA off its ass to try and keep up.
This video, with the audience of engineers, is terrific. 10 minutes of unadulterated pride.
https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2024/10/blastoff-spacex-starship-launches-on.html
I watched the first Falcon 9 landing and thought “Space Cadet!”
Then I watched this, and thought “The Grand Master has finally been out-imagined.”
This video, from the crowd on the ground at Boca Chica, is also great. Finest quote: “No F*cking Way!”
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-miracle-of-the-flying-skyscraper#media-e7b86871-7297-4354-9e88-148a0380dce0