Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Glories past and inevitable financial decline

I'm sitting in the science museum right now. Normally I would be feeling pangs of nostalgia for past British glories, especially in the space section with its model of Black Arrow.

But today its time to feel sorry for the Americans as they start down the same road with Obama cancelling their plans to return to the moon.

Not that he's made the wrong decision. The future does lie with better innovation. But I fear this is the first step in the US having to face up to the financial reality that they are broke. There will be far more pain to come, and our share of it is over due also.

But we can both over come our disastrous financial states. ( The US is at least staging a recovery, the UK is still cursed by Brown's canutist govt. ) We have little to fear and much to gain if we face up to the world as it is, and stop living in Labour's fantasy narrative.

This was the lesson of the eighties, taught to us by Mrs Thatcher. It's a great shame it has to be re-learnt.

Sent from my HTC

1 comment:

Bill (Transcriber) said...

Thats Black Arrow R4. The real thing. The project was cancelled in 1971. R3 successfully launched satellite Prospero from Woomera Dec 1971. The last one (R4) was donated to the science museum after the cancellation. Black Arrow is an icon for brilliant design and incompetent short sighted government. Another retreat along the long road from technical leadership to where we are now. I hope the yanks do not take the same path.