That’s how long it’s been since the first powered controlled flight at Kitty Hawk. On the hundredth anniversary, I wrote three separate essays. One at Fox News, one at National Review, and one at TechCentralStation. Unfortunately, the latter has succumbed to link rot.
[Update a while later]
Reader Sam Dinkin found it on the Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20031230183806/http://www.techcentralstation.com/121703D.html
But what about the anniversaries of the first *uncontrolled* powered flights?
https://youtu.be/iCTRjK69Vq8
Never ceases to just astound me that we somehow went from first powered flight to kicking up lunar regolith in just 66 years. In the abstract, it just doesn’t seem possible. And yet, it happened.
Yes, good point, it happened, and the advancement between the first flight and the first lunar landing was incredible. Also in 1969, an incredible airliner first flew – the 747. It’s longer than that first flight.
Flash forward half a century; the 747 is still in production, not much has changed in the airline industry except seats have gotten a lot smaller. As for space flight, we’ve proudly gone from landing on the moon to… erm… having to buy rides from the Russians.
“Never ceases to just astound me that we somehow went from first powered flight to kicking up lunar regolith in just 66 years. In the abstract, it just doesn’t seem possible. And yet, it happened.”
It happened with two world wars and a major world-wide depression in between. So how come we “can’t” get astronauts to the ISS on American rockets? Oh, yes…Rand has answered that brilliantly.
My grandmother was 5 when the Wrights first flew, and still alive age 71 to see Apollo 11 land on the Moon. I was 7 when Sputnik I went up, and I’m 69 now. Maybe Starship will fly in the next couple of years…