A call to be bold

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Scanning the international news last week, two stories jumped out at us one afternoon.
First, The New York Times published an article about how China's economy is poised to grow due to the current high speed rail projects that are under construction, linking the major markets in that highly populated, but geographically large, nation. The rail plan was part of China's economic stimulus following the recession that began in 2008. The article says that just as the interstate highway projects of the 1950s in the U.S. bolstered our economy, experts believe the high speed rail investment in China will lead that already powerful nation to a new level of economic prosperity.
On the same day, CNN ran a story of how two companies are developing the next generation of supersonic aircraft, to replace the speedy Concorde airplanes that were discontinued several years ago. What struck us most about the article was that one of the companies predicted it could have its plane, able to make a trip from Paris to Tokyo in a little more than two hours, ready by 2050. The other company predicted a somewhat speedier debut, but still a decade away in 2021. That's nearly 40 years for the first developer, and 10 years for the second, to build a plane that can do what the Concorde did way back in 1969 when it first flew.
Dealing with the CNN article first, we have to wonder why it seems to be taking longer and longer to make technological breakthroughs. Why would it take 40 years to built a new aircraft when similar technology proved successful more than 40 years ago? Why are we awaiting the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet next month, when the U.S. space program has no replacement vehicle for our astronauts and scientists to use? Starting this year, America will be forced to rely on Russia to get our astronauts to the space station and back.
Our best and brightest are telling us it would take 10 to 40 years to build a new supersonic airplane, when in just seven years we developed never-before-imagined technology to build the Apollo space program that took men to the moon in 1969 and the 1970s.
In his September 1962 speech, President John F. Kennedy said Americans would go to the moon by the end of the decade. And, by gosh, we did. The president said that despite only being a generation removed from the first days of human flight, we would find a way to get to the moon and back "because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."
Kennedy said that if we, as a nation, were going to undertake something so massive, costly, risky and so full of the unknown, "then we must be bold."
Are we being bold today?
Or are we sitting by as China takes a bad situation in the recession, and uses it to invest in a new, revolutionary infrastructure that will aid that nation today and for generations to come? Are we standing off to the side, busy cutting projects from public funding, while other nations ferry our astronauts into space? While we accept it as reasonable for it to take a lifetime to build an airplane that was already built a lifetime ago?
It's time for our current president, all our current leaders, to look past the little games they play on our time and with our tax dollar.
It's time to be bold.