Wright flights remarkable... but what now?
It was 100 years ago that the first successful powered flight was achieved by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, N.C., and the intervening years have seen remarkable advances in flight.
There is no doubt Dec. 17, 1903 will always be considered one of the great days in the march of human history. Humankind had dreamed of flight for centuries, but it was the Wright brothers who through ingenuity and hard work achieved it.
It started us down the path to an equally remarkable achievement when humans broke the gravitational chains of earth and flew to the moon on July 20, 1969.
It is hard to believe that second great moment in history came a mere 66 years after the Wright brothers barely achieved powered flight. The longest flight on that day in 1903 was less than a minute. What a testimony to humankind's inventiveness that so much was achieved in such a short time.
Yet, in the past few decades these great advances seem to have stalled. The dream of supersonic flight for passenger aircraft seems to have died for the present with the passing of the Concorde.
And humankind has been satisfied with relatively minor space achievements since reaching the moon. No other celestial bodies have been visited by humans and even efforts to build a space station hovering over our planet have been lackluster.
Where are the great dreams of those who wanted us to fly like the birds? Where is the spirit of exploration that many had expected to push humankind farther and farther into space? The dreams seem to have given way to daily grind of living.
President Bush is now talking about a new space initiative, but it will be costly and there will be many who question whether we can afford to buy dreams when there are so many realities right here on earth we must deal with.
Part of the answer may be to return to flight's roots. The Wrights did not work for the government. They had a goal and they worked to achieve it. They also risked their lives. Although they eventually profited from their hard work, there was never any assurance they would do so.
This same spirit of independence, entrepreneurship and free enterprise could help put humankind into space again. To some extent this is already happening. Private companies have found success in launching communications and other types of satellites.
Even more could be achieved if free enterprise was encouraged rather than tolerated (or even discouraged) in the space program. It will require an entirely different mind-set, of course, but perhaps it could shake us free of the flight doldrums we seem to be experiencing.