When I was a boy in the distant '70s I had a library of space exploration books. The consensus of the books was that we would have a permanent space station by '80, a Mars expedition by '90, a Moon base by 2000 and a Mars colony by 2010. By 2100 we were going to be blasting off for Alpha Centauri or Bernard's Star. We were going to the stars, baby!
Pie in the sky, all of it. Go ahead someone, blame the Shuttle itself. You'd be half-right, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch the dream die.
It may be immature of me, but I'm still a bit bitter and discontented about how things actually turned out. Instead of living in a new Great Age of Exploration, I get to live in the First Age of Navel Gazing. Or is it the Same Old Age of Fruitless Genital Twiddling? On way or the other, it will come to naught.
“Instead of living in a new Great Age of Exploration, I get to live in the First Age of Navel Gazing.”
Lol so true. Kids today think they are so technologically savvy, if they only knew we dreamed a lot bigger back then.