George Rebane
Reaction Engines of Great Britain is developing Skylon – a new spaceplane to introduce the next generation of ships that will take humans outward from earth. The machine will be able to take off like an airplane and again land like one. The engineer.co.uk reports –
In the quiet suburbs of Oxfordshire, a small team of engineers may be on the way to achieving what NASA scientists couldn’t – the development of a spaceplane that could reach far into the solar system.
Abingdon-based Reaction Engines has designed the Skylon plane to take payloads – or even passengers – into space from a conventional airport and return them back down to the same runway. The design can carry a 12-tonne payload and could, according to the company, fundamentally change the way we view space travel.
I am disturbed that this technology is being developed somewhere other than in the US of A. The good part of the news is that its developer is a visionary private enterprise, the kind that we’re doing a good job of putting the kibosh on in our fundamentally transforming country.
Actually, the kibosh part has already been applied here for the better part of forty years when you consider our government run system of schools. My generation of teachers who graduated into the Great Society drank a full measure of the kool-aid then served, and went on to dismantle one of the greatest school systems the world has ever seen. They devised every established liberal looney curriculum and ‘enhanced’ teaching approach you could think of. These ranged from New Math to revised history to self-esteem über alles. But their greatest contribution to the destruction of Johnny and Jane’s education was– wait for it – the all powerful, kids-be-damned teachers unions.
The result was lots of socialist pap and legions of lawyers. Fewer and fewer native sons and daughters studied science and math, primarily because there were no teachers who really knew the subject matter. We kept our universities up to par in science, math, and engineering by importing students from overseas. After making them smart, we made it hard for most of them to stay and shipped them back. Luckily, we weren’t on a tear yet to destroy the environment in which you could build companies and wealth. But be patient, it’s a’comin’.
So now we read of Skylons being developed overseas while our conglomerate aerospace behemoths (GE, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, …) are busy brown-nosing Washington and buying politicians to get government contracts to stay alive and dance the beltway boogie. Who knows, maybe after November we’ll wake up and put a burr under our own blanket?
In the meanwhile we are at least beginning to make noises as if we understand that something terrible has happened to our schools. Here is a piece ‘A Teacher Quality Manifesto’ by Deborah Kenny, founder and CEO of Harlem Village Academies, talking about a new culture and generation of teachers. The only problem with her presentation is that she doesn’t recognize the pre-requisite for teachers being respected as professionals and academics – they have to become one first. Teachers’ schools have been turning out low-grade ore for almost two generations now. You know the slogan, ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, … .’
Also take a look at the trailer to the new film Waiting for ‘Superman’ coming out this Friday that promises to be the cri de coeur of education (more here). If there is hope for us in this land, it is through the complete revamping of how and what we teach our kids; and it can’t be more of the same political crap that we have been feeding the little darlings since the sixties. Now, everyone hold your breath for that one.
rebanesruminations.com 
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