SpaceShipOne

You've like already seen links to the news about SpaceShipOne, the privately funded space flight that succeeded today. (Pointless inclusion of links to more of the same story you've likely seen stuck in just in case I'm wrong.)

I almost have no words. When I was very little, I wanted to go into space. When I was a little older, I didn't want to go myself, but I wanted mankind to go. I want us to go there, I want us to be out there. And for so many years, that dream has been stuttering and dying as our country, having been among the leaders of the race to get there, let that effort fall and fail and bleed because it's too attached to one approach.

This may have only been a proof of concept flight, and it may not have been set to accomplish much. But what it was set to accomplish, it did. Private industry, reaching into space. A new chance, a hope.

I cried. Of course I cried. The dream's more alive now than it has been in years, to my eyes. I envy the people who were able to be there. But not a lot. You don't have to be in the middle of the desert watching it go up to understand, to feel what happened today. It would have been neat to be there; but what happened was a whole lot more than neat.