The Eagle Has Landed

I was four and a half years old when my mother put me in front of the television set and told me that they were sending men to the Moon. Decades later, I had the pleasure of being in the same room as Buzz Aldrin (I was seated in the back of the auditorium; he spoke from a podium at the front). I marked the fifty-second anniversary of the Moon landing by leaving a message for my sister; she called back, and put the telephone on speaker so my niece could hear as well.

I reminisced about seeing the launch, and quoted, “The Eagle has landed; tell your children when/Time won’t drive us down to dust again.”

And I hope that time won’t drive us down to dust again. I am glad to hear of Jeffrey Bezos taking a brief trip into space, and of Richard Branson’s and Elon Musk’s projects. Elizabeth Warren and others aren’t happy with billionaires doing what they think should be done, if at all, by NASA, while private businesses are heavily taxed to pay for whatever Senators and other politicians think worthy. My view is otherwise; I say that SpaceX and others have made launches cheaper than NASA ever managed, and I hope to see them accomplish much more.

The big-spending, high taxing opponents of free enterprise in space remind me of villains from a Poul Anderson novel, or maybe from Michael Flynn’s Firestar series. Let us leave them in the dust!