SAN FRANCISCO – Only 63 years passed between the Wright Brothers’ famous first flight in Kittyhawk, North Carolina, in 1903 and the first human boots stepping on lunar soil in 1969. In only six decades between these monumental events, humanity evolved from hundreds of thousands of years of earthbound existence to cruising on commercial planes, fighting intercontinental wars from the skies, and planting feet and flags on the moon.
The first half of the 20th century was a time of unprecedented innovation, ingenuity, and cooperation in space and sky, resulting in breakthroughs that some humans then and now could hardly accept as real (cue the fake moon landing crowd). This age of technological wonders also served to cement American dominance on the world stage, but once that dominance was secured, the aerospace sector traded an innovation mindset for an incremental one. The wrenching revolution gave way to slow, steady, and small progress.
Whereas our parents and grandparents lived through a period of profound aerospace innovation, most of us have grown up in the incremental era. That’s about to change.
INCHING FORWARD
Even the most casual observer of history knows that trends are cyclical and change never comes without a catalyst. This is the story of how we got here, to a world where air and space innovations conceived decades ago continue to help the U.S. police much of the world’s political and economic interests.
After World War II ended, nations jockeyed to reposition themselves in the global pecking order, with air and space dominance factoring prominently. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki raised the stakes for all humanity and kicked off the arms race. But the Cold War wasn’t just about nuclear might; it was also about technological superiority, and no stage was bigger than space. The Soviets shocked the world with Sputnik, and then the U.S. claimed the biggest prize when the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon.
In the aftermath of WWII and the Cold War, the world settled into a period of relative stability by historical standards. With its dominance on land, sea, air, and now in space secured, the U.S. became enforcer of a global social contract wherein economic interests became global in nature and sovereign nations didn’t invade each other. With the urgency of the arms and space races in the past, the American military industrial complex settled into an incremental posture that dominated from the 1970s until today.
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