The Rockies

Recall that I became an engineer, in part, due to the Challenger accident in January 1986. My path wasn't all that direct, mind you, and any number of events might have derailed my efforts but I eventually did become an engineer. I was in trigonometry class when I heard of the accident...interestingly, I use trig almost daily in my work as a power protection engineer. I hate to say that it was the death of several astronauts that spurred me on, not the space program directly, but nonetheless it was a national topic for months and kept me wanting.

I wonder about what events today will inspire teenagers to want to become engineers. Clearly, we can now forget about manned space exploration, not unless our youngsters speak fluent Russian or Chinese. Not likely, not in this nation. In addition to the budget cuts associated with NASA come budget cuts for powerful school programs like woodshop, autoshop, music, and foreign languages. Our kids have become wonderful standardized test takers yet will never be able (or more correctly, will never want) to change out their own vehicular units' oil filters. We are a services nation, so we ought to pay others for such "services" such as oil changes so we don't have to get all that icky, icky oil under our fingernails.

I will attribute the loss of this nation's manned space exploration through an anecdote -- a guy named Rocky.

Rocky has not held a job since I met him in 2008, living amongst dozens of other non-working citizens within a forty-yard radius of my cousin's rental in South Sacramento. He had an operation to attach some sort of plate to support his neck bones, and now, obviously, cannot work. Obviously. Two weeks ago, he received a lump sum settlement from social security disability, and now, going forward, he has no problems telling me how he finally feels secure about the future, now that he'll be receiving a $1,200 check every month ad infinitum.

The next day after receiving a check for the 2.75 years of back social security payments the government owed him, he rolled up in a [fairly new] 725i BMW and paid my cousin $15 to have it detailed. I rolled up in my little piece of shit Honda Civic. Granted, I have options, yes. But I felt quite a bit of jealousy, I will freely admit. I am not one to spend money on such things, but still, I couldn't help but feel some degree of unfairness in all this.

Unfairness, particularly when I learned that Rocky decided to spring for a Lodi skydiving adventure, satisfying a long lifetime dream of doing it once. Granted, it was a tandem jump...but didn't that motherfucker pay for the skydive with funds supplied by a taxpayer funded governmental check due to disability?

There are millions of other Rockies out there in the broad land of ours, and each one contributes his/her part to this nation's loss of manned space exploration.