Endurance

Fascinating, and - if nothing else - extraordinarily honest. Obviously he is a bit of a dick, but probably you have to be. Selfish. Focussed. Driven. Obsessive. So what does it to you about spaceflight generally? Even simple things are difficult and can only be accomplished with the support of a huge and expensive bureaucracy. Things break all the time. The stable state is - broken. Vacuum. Death. 50 years since the right stuff that so inspired him but actually very little has changed. On the other hand it’s clear that there is incremental learning and Improvements in our capability. But how expensive - how dangerous? Undoubtedly we could make it to Mars. But so what? Orbit has a value of it’s own. But wider space exploration seems quixotic. How much has changed in my lifetime. How sad.