Congratulations to visionary pioneers Burt Rutan, Richard Branson and team, on SpaceShipTwo’s latest milestone — a smooth and successful 11-minute solo glide flight yesterday, after being dropped from mothership Eve at 45,000 ft. Story here, and by all means watch the video highlights here.
Their achievement marks a significant step on the road to developing Rutan’s history-making SpaceShipOne prototype into a viable commercial space tourism platform.
I think Johan Norberg is right: Entrepreneurs are the heroes of the world. Space is opening up for broader access, and it’s the efforts of can-do problem solvers like Rutan and Branson who will drive innovation and lead the way. My admiration for them, and gratitude that the human race can produce such people, is tremendous.
To any who missed the making of history the first time around, when in 2004 Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize for manned commercial space flight, I heartily recommend the Discovery Channel’s superbly done “Black Sky: ‘The Race for Space’ and ‘Winning the X Prize’” documentary. If it doesn’t get you all fired up about the future of space travel, nothing will. As Rutan said of a milestone on the road to that earlier achievement:
This is the first time that a small company, without being supported by the government, has developed and flown a supersonic airplane. Now you would think that the first private supersonic airplane would just barely go supersonic in level flight. This morning we went supersonic going almost straight up. [laughs] That was cool!
…
Clearly there is an enormous pent-up hunger to fly in space, and not just dream about it. We do want our children to go to the planets. We are willing to seek breakthroughs by taking risks. And if the business-as-usual space developers continue their decades-long pace, they will be gazing from the slow lane as we speed into the new space age.
Thanks to dreamers and doers like Rutan and Branson, the pace of development is accelerating, we are on our way to a promising and exciting future in space.
UPDATE 2010-10-13: Fixed the “Black Sky” documentary link and enclosing paragraph. (It’s easy to overlook a missing closing quote in a Markdown link title, but the result should have been more apparent to me in proofreading — text gobbled up until the next quote!)
UPDATE 2021-01-29: Thanks to BillWhittle.com member Jack R. for reminding me about the Wayback Machine! Scattered copies of Bill’s essays exist around the web if you search for them by title, but there’s also a complete archive of ejectejecteject.com here.
UPDATE 2016-04-17: As of a while ago, “Eject! Eject! Eject” went completely offline, with no clear word yet from Bill on what happened or if/when its content will be back. Bill’s “Silent America” essays are still available on Amazon in print form, and there is a copy of “You Are Not Alone” here. We’ll have to make do with those for now. Here’s hoping we’ll see the full catalouge of his superb essays republished again. Their insight and ability to uplift are timeless.
UPDATE 2012-05-25:Fantastic news! “Eject! Eject! Eject!” is back on the air — and, with it, every single one of Bill’s superb “Silent America” essays, including the long-lost (except in print form) History, Victory, Magic, Responsibility, Strength (including Part 2), Deterrence (complete with its Part 2), Sanctuary (yes indeed, dear readers, there’s a Part 2 too!), and Power!
Here’s an updated list. Please disregard the list further below that I’ve crossed out.
- Honor – December 22, 2002
- Freedom – December 22, 2002
- Empire – December 27, 2002
- War – January 26, 2003
- Courage – February 15, 2003
- Confidence – February 23, 2003
- History – March 29, 2003
- Victory – April 27, 2003
- Magic – June 7, 2003
- Trinity, Part 1 and Part 2 – July 4, 2003
- Responsibility – August 20, 2003
- Power – October 1, 2003
- Strength, Part 1 and Part 2 – May 22, 2004
- Deterrence, Part 1 and Part 2 – October 6, 2004
- Sanctuary, Part 1 and Part 2 – May 18, 2005 (not part of first print edition)
- Tribes – September 5, 2005 (not part of first print edition)
(ps – Try setting your browser to ISO Latin 1 encoding If, like me, you see ‘?’ placeholder characters where much of the punctuation should be when viewing some of Bill’s essays. For Safari, this is “View” -> “Text Encoding” -> “Western (ISO Latin 1)”. Bill’s site is mis-declaring the content as UTF-8. Oh well. You can’t have everything.)
From previous incarnations of this post:
Bill Whittle’s incisive “Afterburner” PJTV editorials have brought his sharp thinking to a whole new audience, but it was Bill’s brilliant and uplifting writing on the history, character, and spirit of America that I and many others first encountered. Bill’s superb essays — which he published first online at ejectejecteject.com, and later in print under the title “Silent America” — lifted me up when I needed it most, and are far and away some of the very best writing about this precious American civilization of ours that I have had the good fortune of encountering.
Since I often find myself recommending Bill’s “Silent America” essays, and since attempts to do so are bedeviled by the fact that many did not survive Bill’s move from ejectejecteject.com to pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject intact, I’ve compiled a list of them, with links to the ones that made it over. Thankfully, Bill has begun republishing them one by one at his new Pajamas Media address, and I’ve linked to the newly published copies where available. The “Silent America” essays are, in order:
- Honor – December 22, 2002
- Freedom – December 22, 2002
- Empire – December 27, 2002
- War – January 26, 2003
- Courage – February 15, 2003
- Confidence – February 23, 2003
- History (broken) – March 29, 2003
- Victory (broken) – April 27, 2003
- Magic (broken) – June 7, 2003
- Trinity, Part 1 and Part 2 – July 4, 2003
- Responsibility (broken) – August 20, 2003
- Strength, Part 1 (broken) and Part 2 (broken) – May 22, 2004
- Deterrence, Part 1(broken) and Part 2 (broken) – October 6, 2004
- Sanctuary (part of second edition only), Part 1 (broken) and Part 2 (broken) – May 18, 2005
- Tribes (part of second edition only) – September 5, 2005
- Power (broken) – October 1, 2003
Unfortunately “(broken)” means there’s almost nothing there to read. Most of these essays are truncated after the first few sentences or words. I’ll come back and update these links as each essay is, hopefully, republished. Meanwhile, the previous, “(broken)” links are just for reference.
There is, however, hope! You can buy the complete set of essays in book form on Amazon, which I can almost guarantee you’ll want to do after sampling Bill’s unparalleled wares.
Bill, by the way, can be found on Twitter as @BillWhittle.
Also, here’s a link to all the blog posts where I’ve quoted or mentioned Bill’s writing.
Enjoy!
Previous updates to this post:
UPDATE 2010-09-06: I’m delighted to report that one of Bill’s very finest essays, “Trinity”, is now back online. Don’t miss it. Thanks to reader David B. for sending the updated links!
UPDATE 2010-09-09: Freedom is back up too! (Thanks again to David B.!)
UPDATE 2011-04-30: Sadly, pajampajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject started returning blank pages recently. I have an email inquiry out to the site admins about whether the Eject! Eject! Eject! archives can be brought back. Meanwhile, all of the following links are currently non-functional. I’ll try to keep on top of the situation and update this post when it hopefully improves. Thanks for visiting!
UPDATE 2011-08-13: I just noticed pajampajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject is back online, and the above Silent America essay links appear to be working again!
I’ve made a habit, for some years now, of collecting quotes that strike me as profoundly insightful or interesting, probably for all the same reasons that others do — for the keenly focused insight and concise expression of ideas they offer, as well as the inspiration and distilled wisdom they can call to mind on a moment’s notice.
Having recently sifted through the assortment of text files where I’ve been gradually stashing these hand-selected quotes away, I’ve assembled the best of them into a new “Quotes” page that I invite you all to visit.
The topics include Liberty & Economics, Cultural Confidence, War, and keeping Perspective. I hope my readers will draw as much enjoyment from them as I have.
UPDATE 2010-02-08: I’ve added several more selected gems, dug out of a handwritten journal I’ve kept off and on since September 2002. Enjoy!
This Wall Street Journal piece by Charles Murray went by a few months ago, but is such an excellent bit of writing that I’m belatedly posting about it as I meant to back then. “Europe Syndrome” is well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a highlight.
I, for one, am an American Exceptionalist at heart — so grateful to have had the good luck to be born right where I belong. I often fear we are a dying breed. We must figure out how to keep the shining beacon, the defiantly individualistic spirit of American Liberty aglow.
American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I’m thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it. That’s quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America—by and large, Americans celebrate others’ success instead of resenting it. That’s just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism—the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree. No other country comes close.
Underlying these symptoms of American exceptionalism are the underlying exceptional dynamics of American life. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a famous book describing the nature of that more fundamental exceptionalism back in the 1830s. He found American life characterized by two apparently conflicting themes. The first was the passion with which Americans pursued their individual interests, and made no bones about it — that’s what America was all about, they kept telling Tocqueville. But at the same time, Tocqueville kept coming up against this phenomenal American passion for forming associations to deal with every conceivable problem, voluntarily taking up public affairs, and tending to the needs of their communities. How could this be? Because, Americans told Tocqueville, there’s no conflict. “In the United States,” Tocqueville writes, “hardly anybody talks of the beauty of virtue… . They do not deny that every man may follow his own interest; but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be virtuous.” And then he concludes, “I shall not here enter into the reasons they allege… . Suffice it to say, they have convinced their fellow countrymen.”
The exceptionalism has not been a figment of anyone’s imagination, and it has been wonderful. But it isn’t something in the water that has made us that way. It comes from the cultural capital generated by the system that the Founders laid down, a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with each other. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we love about Americans can go away. In some circles, they are going away.
…
The possibility that irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real. And so it is our job to make the case for that reawakening. It won’t happen by appealing to people on the basis of lower marginal tax rates or keeping a health care system that lets them choose their own doctor. The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed. It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.
I have a bad habit of responding to e-mails that I should probably just let slide, as I did again yesterday when this YouTube video was enthusiastically recommended by a relative as “brilliant”. Below is my [diplomatic but fairly direct] reply. Is it just me, or does the tone of this thing bother anyone else?
Thought-provoking video!
I like the clever trick of reversing the words, but it’s hard for me to know what to make of the content, since it seems deeply cynical about the way things are now, and the priorities it appears to disparage are in many ways my own. Both work, as a means of achieving and striving to advance one’s art, and family life are important to me, in balance. Do I have to choose only one? (Interesting that the narrator’s voice sounds female; I wonder, would some object to the seeming implication that she should choose family life over work as the approved-of right thing?) Further, does choosing to focus my considerable efforts on my own life’s aspirations and my family’s well-being and happiness, instead of in some public sector endeavor (is that the implication of “changing the world”?), really make me “apathetic” and “lethargic”? I do not feel “lost” at all, but very much in my element doing exactly what I want and need to be doing, and what is also most likely to contribute something useful to the world.
Money isn’t the most important thing, but it’s a useful means of exchange, and a seemingly indispensible means to an end of achieving the life one wants. Maybe put differently, it certainly isn’t the most important thing … until one doesn’t have enough of it — then it can of course become painfully important. Family comes before money for money’s sake, to be sure, but it would hard to raise a family and realize one’s hopes for them without some measure of it.
I also think we can become better caretakers of the planet without having to beat ourselves up excessively over the things we do and the resources we use to do them. (Seems almost like the ideas of original sin, guilt, and the need to atone for our perceived offenses are deeply embedded in the human mind, even when not expressed in a religious context?) I like the aspiration to do things better and more wisely and efficiently, but that kind of gloomy approach always bothers me.
I do generally agree, and have said so before myself, that many of the essential ingredients of true happiness come from within. Maybe that is the key take-home point that I’m missing in getting hung up on all the rest leading up to it? If nothing else, hearing another’s perspective articulated can help to clarify things one takes for granted about one’s own. Thanks for the interesting video!
I think there’s more troublesome stuff in this that I missed commenting on too. The implication of “work”, for example, seems to be of something that takes unreasonably from one without giving back, rather than being an opportunity to pursue genuinely worthwhile goals and ambitions that produce reward (monetary, spiritual, and in my field technological) for yourself and others.
Guess I’m just glad I’m nowhere near that cynical?
Update: I just noticed that the creator of this clip is apparently still in college, so presumably hasn’t experienced having a career of any kind yet, let alone a fulfilling one. Maybe that explains the focus on money issues instead of achievement and fulfillment?
Via Drudge: Gideon Rachman in the London Financial Times (emphasis mine):
Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.
And yet, the author seems nonetheless to favor the idea, both throughout the article and in his closing:
The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.
Pesky, provincial voters! Where is their vision? Clearly there’s a need for someone to “crack this problem”. The will of the unwashed masses can’t possibly be allowed to stand in the way of global progress.
The most frightening thing about the idea of a single world government is precisely what gives it such appeal to those who would see themselves in positions of power within it: There is no escape (short of a rocket ride to an as-yet-nonexistent off-Earth colony, and who knows even then what the governing arrangement with the mother planet will be?). Don’t like the regulatory climate, taxation scheme, or laws abridging free speech or free exercise of religion where you are? Tough. That’s the way it will be, everywhere.
