A politician finally promised a base on the moon in return for electing them president.
For a moment, let’s put aside all the political pandering points and just look at the idea. The dream consists of going back to the moon for the first time since 1972 (Apollo 17). It’s an audacious dream, probably a bit impractical, but one I think that’s desperately needed again.
We’ve forgotten how to dream big. As a kid, I dreamt of being an astronaut one day. From galaxy wallpaper to shuttle Legos, space travel became a minor obsession that filled my thoughts.
And then we grow up. I lost that spark of imagination for a while. The creative side of me focused on coloring inside the lines rather than drawing the image myself. Give a kid a box of crayons and they immediately begin creating something. Give the same box to an adult and they just look at you funny.
That’s why so many people laughed when they heard the idea for a moon base. To me, those people are the ones who can’t dream anymore. I’m sure President Kennedy’s critics tried to kill the dream of an Apollo program. But he pushed through and convinced the American people it was the right challenge – the right dream for us.
Starting from practically nothing, President Kennedy and NASA took us to the moon. Not only should we go back, we should use it as a jumping off point for the rest of the universe. We need an audacious dream like this just to prove we can still dream.
And yeah, John Stewart’s name of Moonlandia is actually pretty cool.
