We put a man on the moon 40 years ago, so why can't we...

It is a popular chime for Presidents. "My fellow Americans, the time is now for a Sputnik moment. We need a new Apollo Program to innovate in (insert technological area here) in order to stay competitive."

The reason these mantras do not work is because the "Sputnik Moment" for us was in September 2001. The whole nation, faced with an Axis of Evil, rallied. And now we're tired. Isn't that what the 70's were? The Cold War Hangover Decade? Really, the parallels between the Space Race and the War on Terror are striking. Both featured a serious event to kick things off, Sputnik and 9/11. Both featured huge amounts of government spending poured into building advanced machinery that would, through attrition or spending or both, defeat the enemy. Both had their moment about a decade later, Armstrong's landing/getting Osama. Both wound down after about 12 years. And both featured similar faces in the Defense industry getting tons and tons of money to deliver tech to the Government: The Apollo Lunar Module was built by Grumman, which is now Northrop-Grumman, which builds the B-2 bomber and the RQ-4 Global Hawk.The rocket used to launch the moon landers, the Saturn V, was built by Boeing. Heard of them?

In any case, we've got our Sputnik moment, our Space Race, and our Khrushchev. We've won. Or lost, or whatever. We're ready to move on.

So the question comes back around to, as it always does, what the next Space Race will be. What will the next Sputnik moment be? Given that these moments seem to space themselves out by 4 decades, I'm guessing we don't need to worry about it for a while.


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