Space exploration is something I bring up semi-regularly and mostly because for people of my generation the idea of exploring the stars was a realistic goal when we were kids. A lot had happened in the 20th century before I was born.
Being born in the 1970s means that there were people alive when I was who lived before the Wright brothers made their maiden flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. By the 1940s aircraft were becoming a decisive factor in warfare, especially in the Pacific Theater and during the war years, the Heinkel He 178 became the first jet-powered aircraft. In June of 1944, a German V-2 rocket broke the Kármán line barrier and unofficially became the first manmade object to reach space.
Other accomplishments built upon those. In 1947 Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, something many thought was impossible, slightly over 40 years after the Wright Brothers flew. Just under 17 years after the V-2 made it to outer space, on the 12th of April in 1961 Yuri Gagarin made the first manned flight into outer space and orbited the earth. In just 58 years mankind went from the first successful airplane that flew a whopping 10 feet above the ground for 12 second to a man flying into outer space and orbiting the globe.
The space race was on and culminated with Apollo 11. A few years before I was born, Neil Armstrong stepped off a ladder and onto the surface of the moon on July 21st, 1969 (for purposes of this post we will assume the moon landing actually happened).
Think about that. From December of 1903 when the first manned flight took place in this rickety contraption…
….to less than 66 years later man was standing on the surface of the moon…
That is staggering when you think about it.
At the same time that the Apollo 11 mission was taking place, other advancements were also happening such as the advent of the microprocessor and the continued improvements that make the NASA computers at the time of the moon landing seem ridiculous in comparison. The first nuclear power plant, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant near Moscow, went online in 1954 and by 1958 the USS Nautilus was the first successful nuclear powered submarine. From a primitive nuclear power plant in 1954 to a nuclear powered submarine in just four years?
With all of the wonderous advancements taking place year by year, it is easy to see why people of my generation thought of space exploration as our birth-right. When Star Wars hit theaters in 1977 some 11 years after Star Trek was first broadcast on television, it was certainly science fiction but the idea that humanity would explore the stars was really just a given. Our films were full of a future where space travel was a reality, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Planet of the Apes to Alien. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were heroes and trailblazers. No one thought that the handful of moon landings meant we were at the end of space exploration rather than the beginning.
We all know how that worked out. I have written about this extensively, notably here: The Dumbing Down Of America.
Instead of a nation that grew out of agrarianism and into a world of high technology enabling space travel, we instead have grown progressively dumber. We are not getting ever closer to reaching the stars, and instead we have devolved into people that couldn’t land on the moon again if we wanted to. As I wrote in the above linked post: “The cold stone truth is that we are further away from manned missions to Mars today than we were on the eve of the first moon landing”. When you think of the progress, some good and some bad but all significant, of the 20th century and then take a hard look at the trajectory of the world in the 21st century you can make some assumptions about where this will end up. It is unlikely to end up with the vast advancements we saw last century that started without mass produced automobiles and ended with everyone owning cars, commercial flight being common and relatively inexpensive and mankind escaping Earth’s orbit and landing on the moon.
When I was heading to Maine for a week of travel, I downloaded Star Trek: Enterprise starring Scott Bakula as Captain Jonathan Archer. I am a long time fan of Star Trek, watching the entire original series, most of the earlier movies, all of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine but later iterations of the universe simply didn’t appeal to me. I hadn’t watched any of Enterprise but it had some positive reviews so I thought I would give it a try. It was awful and silly. The intro song is absolute cringe….
….but as I watched it a few times before I gave up on the series, I Noticed™ something. I took some screenshots as the opening credit roll…
Do you see the theme? Copernicus, a Pole who proposed the sun at the center of the solar system, the HMS Enterprize, the Spirit of St. Louis flown by Charles Lindbergh on the first non-stop transatlantic flight, Amelia Earhart who got lost trying to fly around the world in 1937, Chuck Yeager who broke the sound barrier, the Apollo 11 launch. All of these events in the opening are leading up to the advent of space travel and all of them were accomplished by Whites.
You see, mankind was on a path to explore the stars because White men were creating and inventing and innovating. Our exceptional intelligence coupled with our curiosity and drive to explore and conquer meant we were seeking the stars. Statements like “Space, the final frontier” only make sense to White people. As a child in the 1970s I thought we were headed for a future like the one we saw in Star Trek: Enterprise and with good reason. While we were the ones who were inventing and exploring, the rest of humanity was also benefitting.
Then it slowly ground to a halt. Why?
How did mankind’s steady advancement get derailed? With the trajectory we were on it would have seemed likely that we would have put men on Mars by now and permanent stations on our Moon. If you had asked later 70s or 1980s me if we would have landed men on Mars by 2025 I would have laughed and said of course, and beyond. Perhaps landing on Titan, the enormous moon orbiting Saturn or Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Our march toward exploring the stars was derailed when White people stopped focusing on achievement and those that had the most to offer and started to focus on those among us who were the least accomplished. We began to exalt those who did nothing but hold us back. In every aspect of our society we turned our backs on our own people and focused instead on others. In doing so we did not lift them up to our level but have been steadily dragging our people downward.
Now the plans of NASA for future missions to outer space are sounding like stories from The Babylon Bee. Around a year ago I wrote a post, It Fell Over. Seriously., where I looked at the story of a unmanned moon lander sent by a private company to the moon that apparently fell over. In that same post I added some information about the planned Artemis program that is supposed to be our next manned moon landing. The mission was announced in 2020 and it has been going sideways ever since.
In 2022 NASA was still talking about a new manned mission to the moon in 2025, the Artemis missions named of course for the Greek goddess of the hunt. See, it’s a girl goddess, not some stodgy old boy Greek god. Subtle, no? Of course the Artemis plan released by NASA in September of 2020 was talking about landing “the first woman and the next man” on the moon in 2024.
2024 for those keeping track was last year and no manned moon landing occurred. NASA keeps pushing back the mission, for the obvious reason that they don’t seem able to figure out how to make this happen. Meanwhile NASA has declared that this future manned landing will include not only the first woman to walk on the moon but also the first “person of color!
I noted in the prior post that I think I can pinpoint the problem:
While it’s unknown if a person of color will be among the two first astronauts to return to the moon since the Apollo program in 1972, “these are historic moments in advancing equity for all of humankind,” said Bhavya Lal, acting NASA chief of staff.
“Women and people of color represent a significant contributing portion of all facets of NASA’s workforce, and the last two astronaut classes selected have included the highest percentage of women in history,” Lal said. “Fifty percent of the 2013 National class was female and 45% of the 2017 class. And today, African American, Asian Pacific Islander, Hispanic and multiracial astronauts are about a quarter of NASA’s active astronaut corps.”
Ruh roh. That might explain why this mission keeps getting pushed back. From last month…
NASA Delays Artemis Moon Missions Until 2026 And 2027
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirmed that its first manned flight of the Artemis Moon program won’t launch until April 2026, and the following mission—the first landing on the Moon since 1972—won’t happen until mid-2027.
This is the second time NASA has delayed the launch of Artemis II.
It was previously scheduled to launch in November 2024, and it was then pushed back to September 2025. NASA was targeting a 2026 launch for Artemis III.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the new schedule during a press conference on Dec. 5, emphasizing that it was received with unanimous support from the administration’s executive council and keeps the U.S. space program on track to beat communist China’s goal of landing by 2030.
Anyone taking bets that those missions do not in fact happen in 2026 and 2027? That would be easy money.
The new launch schedule comes after a lengthy investigation was conducted into unexpected char and erosion discovered on the heat shield of Artemis I’s unmanned Orion capsule upon its return.
The capsule selected for Artemis II has an identical heat shield. But NASA’s leadership told reporters that its investigation showed that it was still reusable so long as the re-entry trajectory is adjusted.
You couldn’t pay me enough to strap into those deathtraps in 2026.
Exploring the stars was the birthright of White Americans and we sold it for a mess of pottage called “diversity”. What is worse, with Whites under replacement fertility rates around the globe it will be impossible for whatever races remain as we fade away to carry on our work.
Our dreams of space have been set aside and now I dream of the lights staying on for the next decade.
Your best Thought ever, and maybe the saddest.
I was four when Apollo 11 landed, and followed every NASA mission like it was a puppy. Or I was a puppy. I don’t know. Point being, I started school with the Apollo Program being my view of the world outside of home. I thought that was how things worked. Go to the moon? OK, let’s figure out how and go!
Put the best people on it and get it done.
I had no way of knowing that was to be the last time “the best people” was of any importance.
Fear not comrade, two great hopes still exist for humanity spaceborne (hopefully minus the melanin enriched). These great hopes are Russia and Eastern Asia. Despite the declining birth rate of the former they still have the intellectual capacity (and they tell equality to go fuck itself). The East Asians meanwhile definitely have the brains, their progress will slower though (internal issues and external matters within the northeast-southeast Asian neighborhood).