Enterprise! Farewell

I was late for work Friday, but this time there was a good excuse: As the morning cable news played out, I was on the phone with my sister in Manhattan, acting as her spotter, relaying tidbits of flightplan intel as she raced on foot to photograph the flyover of space shuttle Enterprise on its final flight, en route to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

Contemporary Moving Systems, indeed: Not the best image, but history nonetheless: Space Shuttle Enterprise on its final voyage. Photo by Juliana Lazzaro

I was five years old when this bird first flew. It was 1977: Star Wars was on its original theatrical run and everyone had bigtime hopes for manned space exploration in our lifetime. Now we've arrived in the future and we don't even have a real moonbase yet. Consider that everyone from George W. Bush to Stanley Kubrick to Martin Landau thought we should have had one of those by now.

Meanwhile, let's take heart in SpaceX, Virgin Galactic (everyone should know Burt Rutan), and this latest intrigue: Planetary Resources.

My friend and colleague Mark recently made a heartfelt post on Facebook about the value of dreams, adventure, and imagination. I second his sentiment. The spirit of exploration is one of our best, common bonds. As a new month begins, I recommend you embrace this atomic verb – explore – as an organizing principle and objective in your work, whatever it may be.

Things will only be the better for it.

"This very important thing that we as a species have always done...instinctively we've gone out, and climbed over difficult places, went to more hostile places, and found out later – maybe to our surprise – that that's the reason we survived."   -   Burt Rutan, Feb. 2006