So I'm sitting here this morning watching the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final landing down in Florida.
I tried my best to schedule to make it down for the launch of this mission with my old Buddy Tripp last month, but one thing lead to another and he went down for the launch and I sat here picking my nose and toes doing the stuff I normally do on a day in and day out basis.
Being not only a "Baby Boomer" Boy vintage 1959, but also being a by default "Space Race Child" and wanna-be astronaut about a thousand years ago, I can't help but get a little misty eyed over the ending of this next to last Space Shuttle Mission officially known as STS-134.
(mouse over and click to enlarge the infarred image...captured off of the NASA HDTV feed on my computer)
As I watched NASA TV tonight during the landing process their call of the landing in both Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard Time reminded me of the Whoreish Politicalization of President Kennedy's famous proclamation that we get to the moon before 1970.
You seen, when the idiot in the Book Repository blew our President's head off, the VP Johnson assumed the reins and the keys to the country's budget process and couldn't stand that the basically unrepresented state of Florida would get all of the money spent on the program because they wanted to kill sea turtles launching rockets out over the Atlantic Ocean since Werner Von Braun escaped from Germany after WWII.
So the young Texan/President Johnson used his political power to help spread the proceeds from America's "Space Race" into his home state's direction by putting "Mission Control" about a 1000 miles away over in Houston, Texas instead of building another building at Cape Canaveral or Cape Kennedy on land already owned on the Florida coast...something you could barely GIVE away in the early 1960's.
And meanwhile over in my home state of Alabama, our Senate/Congressional team--Sparkman, Allen, and Dickenson--couldn't stand being left out and so they did the the same thing by setting up part of the Space Programs up in Huntsville, Alabama.
Problem is, as we've learned over the past near 50 years, there was a shit load of bureaucratic inefficiency and duplication and out right insurrection and competition between the factions created between 1961 and 1969, and partially as a DIRECT RESULT of this political pandering PORK BARREL bullshit we find ourselves as of July 2011 unable to launch a man into space within the boundaries of the By-God United States of 'Merica.
And that's just a F**king crying shame...in my considered Redneck Opinion.
Is it just me?
1 comment:
No it's not just you!
What has always infuriated me about the space program, is that they gave away the technology that came from it-Tang and Tempur-Pedic mattress foam just to name two. Why wasn't this knowledge sold or licensed to then make the whole dang program self-supporting?
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