A milestone in human achievement took place yesterday at 4:15 PM (PDT), but the popular press seems to have all but ignored it. Oh, I know that we are facing the greatest financial crisis this country has seen since the 1929, but surely the launch of the first privately owned space ship into Earth orbit (something that will make money in the future) is at least as worthy for reporting as Scarlett Johanson’s Canadian wedding nuptials.
With the Launch of Falcon 1 into orbit, SpaceX has fundamentally changed the playing field of space exploration. But the popular media (CNN, Fox News, Networks etc..) seem to be giving a collective yawn. This might be because the mass media outlets were caught off-guard by the success because, as Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides pointed out in her Wired Science blog, of the previous failures to launch.
However, I can’t begin to fathom this oversight running into today. Even CNN’s tech page doesn’t mention it anywhere, instead focusing on the failure of NASA to launch the shuttle and where to get free ringtones.
It is sad that no one in the media is picking this up, but it reminds me of “Brave Harriet” by Marissa Moss. It is the true story of Harriet Quimby, the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel. It was an amazing feat; too bad it happened on the same day that the Titanic went down. If you want to read more about Harriet, a wonderful children’s book is available:
http://www.amazon.com/Brave-Harriet-First-English-Channel/dp/0152023801
Hopefully the next time we have a privatized space flight go up, the American Economic system won’t be crashing.