I've got Walt Disney to thank. Some people are fascinated by the past, others the future. A child of the Gemini and Apollo space programs (I was too young to remember the Mercury program), I've been fascinated by the possibilities of the future since childhood. Not some Malthusian future, rather that shiny, new future with big "fins" and long sleek lines that Walt and his band of merry men (they were all men in those days, after all) depicted for us in animation. Reality always paled in comparison.
My first childhood aspiration was to become an astronaut. So caught up in our national obsession to put a man on the moon, almost every child my age harbored similar hopes. How amazing now to think how science could displace sports in the pantheon of most popular childhood aspirations. What do six-year-olds aspire to today? Kennedy's genius was in understanding the power of grand, symbolic gestures. So too Reagan. And Obama. The poetry of grand gestures.
If my mother is to be believed I began writing NASA at age 4, although the corraborating evidence would seem to support a much more credible conclusion that it was closer to my seventh birthday when I dragged out my father's trusty old Underwood typewriter and began to peck out letters to NASA requesting photos of the last space mission with my slow, but reliable two-finger typing technique. I never did learn how to type properly. Instead, my typing gradually evolved into an idiosyncratic four-finger technique that I'm saddled with to this day. I can type 70 words per minute, but everyone in the coffeee shop inevitably glances over to see what all that clatter and racket is about, as my fingers dart across the computer keyboard.
What did arrive was a big official looking envelope. One of many that the postman would deliver to our home from NASA's public relations department over the years as I dutifully maintained a correspondence inquiring after the latest mission. Each envelope packed to the gills with big, glossy, 8 x 10 color photographs of the mission crews and gorgeous, high resolution images captured in space.
I learned that if you were curious to see the future, all you had to do was ask.
