I remember when I was a kid and we would get these weekly reader magazines or some such thing that had different books that we could order and they would be shipped to the school. They always had a little selection from different categories so everyone could find something. I remember always looking at the Sci-Fi books on their and being amazed by the covers. One cover always stayed with me and that was a cover of what the future was supposed to look like in 19995 – 2000 and it was just inspiring to think that this was what we were going to be living in.
I never got that particular book but that image always stayed with me. Suffice it to say it is now 2009 and that image would still look like the future by today’s standards. We have come a long way with gadgets and personal technology but we have really lost our way in the ways of space exploration, efficient housing, and automotive technology. I mean, where the hell is my jet pack or flying car? Well the jet packs they have today can keep you afloat for maybe a minute and fifteen seconds and it really has changed that much since the time of Michael Jackson flying into the Super Bowl in the 80’s. As for flying cars, they will never be made legal because we have these things called telephone and electrical poles that carry all this wire zig-zagging across the country, kind of like a big gigantic net to a flying car being used by the public, a public that can’t even drive let alone fly. Not to mention, can you imagine the insurance you would have to pay? You would have morons crashing into houses, trees, and electrical lines daily. Sadly, I doubt we will ever see a time when we can use a flying car as our main mode of transportation.
When it comes to space exploration we have NASA shuttering the shuttle and taking us back to the time of sitting people on the end of a huge gas tank propelled by fire, which would be a rocket to the “Y” generation. How is that for advancement, we are going back. Private industries such as Virgin Galactic are now more advanced in the latest space flight technology than the outdated and prehistoric NASA. Funding is a big problem for NASA, when our government would rather spend 60 Billion dollars for condoms and abstinence programs in Africa instead of advancing our reach from a soon to be over crowded planet, you have a problem. Of course NASA lacks any real kind of direction and it clearly shows. The most economical way for us to go would be the creation of the space elevator and the creation of actual ships would take place high above our atmosphere. We would have no more need for the high cost of fuel to get us into space and that money could go elsewhere. It’s probably not going to happen if NASA has the roadmap though.
Another sobering fact is that we are never going to get of this rock we call Earth, at least in our life time. For the foreseeable future the really cool stuff will remain science fiction.
Tags: Flying car, Jet pack, NASA, Science Fiction, Space elevator, Virgin Galactic
