The Write Stuff

Yesterday, Tom Wolfe wrote a pretty awesome -- if rather sad -- column about how the space program was nothing but a pissing contest with the Russians. The crowning achievement of the actual moon landing, it seems, also spelled the death of the American space program.

The whole column is obviously worth a read, particularly for passages like this one about Von Braun:

It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.

Wehrner Von Braun, who invented the Saturn V Rocket, is to the space program as Jesus was to Christianity, according to an excellent GQ article about NASA's perhaps unwarranted optimism.

In the end, however, it is important to remember what is a rather spectacular achievement. As usual, The Onion describes it best: