So now here we are a century later, and mankind has taken the Wright Brothers invention and run wild with it, just as he intended to. Heavier than-air flight have become commonplace now. The only time that they are really in the public eye big-time like it was 100 years ago is when something terrible happens as a result of the actions of people that are using the plane as a means of travel or terror or whatever. In terms of the invention, the plane has held up very well and there are very little mechanically oriented problems with it, it's the people that use it that have become the problem. The next step in this flight stuff was to fly clean out of the earth itself, and go into space. In less than 60 years after the Wright Brothers invented a flying machine, man had improved them to the point where they could fly right into outer space. The improvements to the space flight part of the program in the last 40 years have far outstripped the advances in manmned flight of any kind between December, 1903 and 1957 ( when the first man-made object, the Soviet Sputnik satellite, was launched successfully into outer space. The latest and arguably greatest part of all of this has been the International Space Station. This has given mankind a permanent outpost in outer space. This is another example of man's improvement on his existing technology, for this station is an improvement on the old Soviet, and then Russian space station Mir, that finally was destroyed last year. The Mir represented that aura of competition that existed back 100 years ago when men from all over were racing against one another to invent a flying machine. The current ISS represents all of mankind working together on something, as it is an international affair.
There are many other project currently going that are part of man's extension of the flight thing into the cosmos. There's the Hubble Space Telescope, taking pictures of things never before seen by man. You have prober satellites going to and studying places like Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. You have weather satellites circling the globe, helping man forecast the weather more accurately. There have been experimenatl probes sent to comets and asteroids and deep space and just about everywhere else in the last few years. What do all these things have in common? The fact that they use up a lot of the taxpayer's money? That's true, but that's not what I mean. I am talking about the fact that all of these endeavors are a positive thing to mankind and help him out greatly, which is what all those inventors that were involved in that madcap race a century ago wanted. They all wanted to have something linked with their name that was a great boon to mankind, that would be used to go on to bigger, better, and greater things. This has been accomplished not only by terrestrial flight, but by outer space flight. Yes it is true that there is another side to all of this. Man did indeed take this wonderful invention and turn it to some fuckin' evil uses. He had figured one of those out within the first ten years after flight was invented by making warplanes to use for his horrid purposes in World War 1. Planes were used to spread death and destruction on a scale never before seen in warfare. There have been warplanes around ever since. The outer space part of things was used in this way as well. The rocketry technology that was used to propel these extra-terrestrial flights was used to equip and launch nuclear warheads as well. Many different weapons of warfare were developed using the same technology that produced all the things that I mentioned before. The are space-based lasers and bombs, and there always the ubiquitous spy satellites orbiting the earth along with all the other ones. The problem is trying to make sure that the positive uses of all of this are always going to outweigh the negative ones. In this new climate that the world has entered into, that is not going to be so easy, as if it ever was easy in the first fuckin' place.
That's why the best thing to do is to focus on the benefits that all the space flight shit brings to mankind. The International Space Station is the thing that has the potential to bring the most benefit. The research that is going on there has great promise. In the weightlessness of space, there are no impurities in the atmosphere, as there are in the air on Earth. This holds tremendous potential in many ways. The main one is that many products that we use in everyday life can be made much better if they are made in a purer environment. Plastics is one of these. There has been tremendous advance in plastics as it is. They are in most everything now. There are plastics that are as strong as steel almost. In space, they can be made to be just as strong as earth steel, for steel is another thing that can made much better by being manufactures in a pure environment. Since it will be awhile yet before man figures out just how to get a steel mill into outer space, plastics are the thing now. Pure plastic would be great for medical purposes to make artificial hearts and shit like that. The everyday products that are made of plastic now would be infinetly more durable with this space plastic. Mr. Businessman would make a shitload of bread off of this, for the uses for this new plastic would grow by leaps and bounds. Another thing that would be made way better in space are drugs. Yes, drugs. Drugs like pills and chemicals would be absolutely pure in space. You would get maximum effect with minimal product. What is now enough for one pill of some kind could conceivably become enough for 10 or more. This would easily offset the increased cost of doing shit in space, because so little would go so far. The effects of these drugs would be pure and clean, and their intended effect would be maximized. Side effects could be greatly reduced. The only problem with this is that it would be a certainty that these space drugs would get out into the black market and become the favorites of abusers and addicts. They would pay a lot of fuckin' money to get some of that space speed or space acid or space coke or space heroin or space downers or whatever. People getting way fucked up on then here on Earth and doing stupid shit would be a major problem. One way to deal with this would be through the reform of drug laws, but that's another column for another time. Another thing that would be much better in space is crops. Any food crop that man grows would be better in a pure environment. The food would be much healthier and and nutritious too. The only thing is that this can only be done on a real; small scale for now, as it's not much easier to get an entire farm into outer space than it is to get a steel mill there.
All of that shit is what should be concentrated on in the future of the technology that the Wright Brothers started. I wonder if they could even have imagined the uses that their shit could eventually be put to. Probably not, but they're both long dead anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Those of us that are here for the second 100 years of flight are the ones that need to make sure that these positive things are the main things that come out of the next generations of improvements on what we have now. Mankind has the capability to use these technologies to improve his life and his knowledge of damn near everything, or he has the equal capabilities to use it to fuck everything up royally. The fact has always been that the positive shit has alawys been something that impacts the lives of the everyday population, while all that other negative shit only benefits a select few. In the past, the general populace hasn't really had the ability to tell the others to quit fucking around and let this shit be used for the good of all. With the technological explosion, this has changed, for all these benefits have gone to the common man. He now sees just what positive shit that all this can do for him, he doesn't need to rely on others to tell him this. The everyday man has benefited from what the Wrights started in many ways in this first 100 years. I can only hope that he wants to keep that up in the second 100 as well. If he doesn't, then the wrong people will get total hold of everything and use it just for their own purposes, without caring for the regular man. This was obviously not what the Wrights intended, for I feel that the positive effects of their invention have far outweighed the negative ones in this first century. The current world situation can change that however. If it does change it to the negative side, then mankind will have lost the real benefits of one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. That would be a real shame for mankind in general, and the memories of the Wright Brothers in particular. That would be a casualty of this new war that would never be able to be gotten over. I hope that enough of the thinking men have a hold of this technology to insure that this never happens, for they owe that to use all in this troubled time that we have entered into. For more information on the Centennial Of Flight, go to the Centennial Of Flight site