Replies

It's going to be next to impossible to recover the lead unless the new NASA space program inspires the youth.

Last Saturday we went to the USC Trojan Huddle -- the annual spring football scrimmage at the LA Coliseum. We stopped by the concession area just outside the stadium where they had a clearance sale for last year's national championship merchadise. The sale was being overseen by students from the USC School of Engineering. Not one American student anywhere in sight. And I struck up conversations with as many as I could and asked them where they were from. Here's a short list:

India (of course), Pakistan, Bangladesh, China (mainland), Borneo, Sarawak, Sri Lanka, Iran, Egypt. I stayed a lot longer than I indended, talked to a lot of students, just to get some specific information.

It won't matter if American youth are inspired or not. They're not going to get the chance to lead America back to technological dominance, because that profession has already been shipped out lock, stock, and barrel.

It's going to be next to impossible to recover the lead unless the new NASA space program inspires the youth.

Hate to be the droppings in the punch bowl, but I know better. As an MIT aerospace grad, and an Air Force officer working very closely with NASA's space pig program, we're fugued in this department. The National Aerospace Plane, lame as it was, was our last attempt to achieve economical access to space, and we now don't have the time to fantasize about last-minute, marathon pipe dream efforts.

It is OK if they stay in the country. We forget where we were in the 50s - the so called "Sputnik generation" - we had fallen behind there too. If there is a concerted effort we can turn it around, but it cannot be just from the top down, and it cannot just happen through government grants. We have to have political, educational and commercial reform, and leadership at all levels. What is really disconcerting is the GOP's insistence on treating this a a problem in light manufacturing. Stop this "retraining" nonsense, Mr. GOP, it misses the point. And yes we will have to take corporate leadership to the woodshed. We did it before at the start of the cold war.

It is the crisis of our times: Globalism. Our elites have a different vision than the rest of us. We will have to see if democracy is really still a powerfiul force in the nation.

The sale was being overseen by students from the USC School of Engineering. Not one American student anywhere in sight. And I struck up conversations with as many as I could and asked them where they were from. Here's a short list:

Hmm...... I wonder how many of those students are going to go home and work in their nation's WMD and other programs designing weapons to kill Americans with.