A Day in Space — The National Space Society

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon. You can hear from Buzz Aldrin and other Apollo astronauts tomorrow at the National Space Society’s Day in Space. I will be closing out the free event: adayinspace.nss.org. Jump to Video

As Apollo 11 headed to the moon, Sir Arthur Clarke wrote: “Escaping from Earth will not always be astronomically expensive; the energy needed to reach space is remarkably small. This will come… most important of all, through the development of reusable boosters, which can be flown for hundreds of missions, like normal aircraft. We have to get away, as quickly as possible, from today’s missile-oriented philosophy of rocket launchers which are discarded after a single flight.

The true Space Age would dawn… and projects which today are barely feasible will become not only relatively easy but economically self-supporting. The closing years of this century should see the beginnings of commercial space flight, which will be directed first toward giant manned satellites or space platforms within a thousand miles above the Earth’s surface.” [long before the ISS, but he describes it well]

38 years later, Clarke went on to write, in October 2007:

“Well in those heady days of Apollo, I couldn’t have anticipated all the detours and distractions of the 1970s that delayed our optimistic projections.
Commercial space flight is now beginning to be technologically feasible and soon will become economically viable. The rise of citizen astronauts has already begun — this time, I doubt if politics can hold up progress because it is no longer so closely tied to the fluctuating interests and resources of national governments. Fortunately, we need not rely solely on governments for expanding humanity’s presence beyond the Earth.

In that sense, space travel is returning to where it started: with maverick pioneers dreaming of journeys to orbit and beyond”

Clarke died five months later. He did not get the chance to see any of SpaceX’s successful launches… making his dream manifest.

Those are some of the stories I’ll be sharing tomorrow at #adayinspace. News summary .

The online event is followed by a live space auction. I am selling some artifacts brought back from the moon… and not just from the moon, but from the surface of the moon, driven around in a Lunar Rover EV. Here is an auction interview on this strange obsession in CollectSpace.