Go Up, Young Man!

North Korea is quite the insular nation. They have closed their borders to pretty much anyone except China. Their people do not travel. They do not have any concept of the world outside their own borders. As a result, they are a dying race of static people living day to day with no concept of a brighter future.

As goes North Korea, so goes the world.

In 1944 when Germany started raining V-2 rockets down on England, the world woke up to the military possibilities of rocketry. Pretty soon there was a "space" race going on between the two leading industrial technology winners of World War II - the United States and Russia. Russia beat the United States by launching Sputnik and putting an orbital satellite in space first. This scared the hell out of the Pentagon and more money and funds were allocated to this strategic threat. We are still living in the shadow of Sputnik.

For more than 50 years now, our space bound technology has been largely tied to strategic threats. The only reason we went to the Moon first was to show Russia that if anyone was going to build a base there, it was going to be the United States. While it is true that NASA has been allowed to continue its existence doing scientific missions, the origins of NASA's birth and the reality behind its existence has always been quasi-strategic. If we weren't afraid of needing space ships to knock killer satellites and stuff out of the sky, we wouldn't need NASA anymore.

And yet, think of what the world has gained because of our "space" race, no matter the reason for its existence. Computers, satellites, cell phones, the internet, digital technology, wireless, fuel cells, etc... All of the greatest technological advancements of the last 50 years come about directly as a result of our ventures into space. Heck, if there hadn't been a space race, our schools wouldn't have upgraded their science and math classes and the United States continued dominance in these fields would not have been possible. It was our vision of a world outside our own that allowed the United States to grow and become the technological leader on this planet.

Now our fifty years of fame has dried up. At a time of economic crisis, our vision has become shrink-wrapped and bound inside our little borders. While we might not be as land-locked in our imagination as North Korea, we are every bit as earthbound. Our policies are based entirely around how to make things work now... not looking forward to the future. Technology in the last few years has produced things like... Facebook... Google... the I-Phone... a better 3-D film... Sure, we've also tackled disease and earthquake preparedness and cars that park themselves - but all of these things are designed to make life here better right now. Viagra does nothing to solve the hunger problems faced by 25% of the world. The proliferation of nuclear technology does nothing to solve the problem of over-population (though it could... in a hurry... unfortunately). Our brand new military aircraft, though very cool to look at, does nothing to alleviate our growing lack of resources as we strip this planet bare.

No, my friends, the solutions can't be found here on Earth. We need to expand our horizons. We need to change our insular views and start looking outwards again. We need someone with a vision to take the reins of our imagination and to lead us to a bright new future.

I'd much rather invest in the trickle-down theory of economics if I thought that there might be something incredibly new on the horizon. Putting half the budget of the United States into a project like a Lunar or Mars Colony would have repercussions for the world's economy that we couldn't even begin to imagine. But before we can do that, we need to have someone in charge that can rise above the petty challenges of today and see the importance of the challenges of tomorrow.