So Elon Musk’s SpaceX company successfully launched his Falcon Heavy rocket.
I was interested for many reasons, most notably for the fact that when he launched his previous rocket – I saw it but didn’t know what it was, so my brain got bent out of shape as I tried to work out whether it was an alien invasion, a Korean rocket or just a Hollywood stunt.
As it did to many others too.
For the record, to make sure Otis wasn’t scared by his parents and odd-parents reaction, I told him it was Santa doing a ‘trial Christmas run’.
He didn’t believe it … which is impressive because at that stage, none of us knew what was actually going on.
But this launch was different.
Bigger. More innovative. More spectacle.
And as amazing as all that is, what I found the most fascinating was how they made the booster rockets return back to earth.
IN UNISON!!!
I’m not saying this just because it’s the sort of thing you only expect to see in a JJ Abrams movie, but because by doing that – he just reduced the cost of space exploration from NASA’s billion dollar a flight price tag, to about 90 million.
Incredible.
But there is something even more wonderful.
No, I’m not talking about the fact it’s made me write the most topical post in this blogs history, I’m talking about how it has reignited the imagination of people around the World.
Shifting the aspirations of tech from making a billion dollar app to literally changing the potential future of the World.
Of course you need a lot of money to do that, but everyone has to start somewhere and as long as Musk continues to show how to do this with responsibility and humour for the benefit of the planet [unlike how he conducts his personal life], then I think he has just introduced humanity to an incredibly exciting chapter in it’s development.
And boy do we need that.