Sunday morning I'm watching a movie called 2010 that came out in the mid 1980's where a futuristic story is told concerning human space travel for the 21st century. It was a fiction but still it sort of gave an impression of where people thought we would be in 25 years and I probably would've thought we wouldn't be far off from that thought. There were AI computers, several orbital bases and large interstellar space craft. Given the rate that we went from the late 50's to the early 80's in space advancement I would've thought that vision to be not far off but today in 2005 its way off. We still have 1 low orbit base, no permenant space based craft and our only options for getting up there are still the ideas from 25+ years ago. To make things worse we actually know how to do most of the things required to be there!

Why have we slowed so much over the past 20 years? NASA is planning a return to the moon scheduled for the year 2018 that sounds a little bit long? Our science, technology and understanding of the effects of humans in space has grown so much but our speed of execution has come to a crawl. Why? JFK put forth to our nation to get to the moon before the end of the decade in 1962 and it was done in 1967. Why can't we execute a mission many times more successful by 2010? Have Americans completely lost their will to compete since the fall of the Soviet Union or is it that we're so worried about hazards and failure now?

Thank God for China

We really haven't had any competition since the USSR fell to drive us to compete. Americans like anyone else seem to only drive towards excellence whenever someone is trying to beat them to it. Unfortunately we never start competing until our competition is neck and neck with us. China is the next big thing and they're catching up with us which is a great thing. Soon the entire world will change with the next big race of technology and achievements. I hope I'm around to see it!

Armstrong says 20 years until Mars

Neil Armstrong recently said it would take 20 years until we can take a trip to Mars. I'm looking forward to this type of advancement because I think we'll eventually have to populate Mars in some fashion in the next 150 years. I'm amazed at how far we've come in technology since the 90's but I'm frustrated that we've yet to push all our new ideas out into the only frontier remaining to us. Space exploration.

Whats the point of this little rant and write? I just wanted to feel out my thoughts on space and put them out there for the rest of the world.

- Jerry Odom
October 4, 2005