239.366 - 2016 project and spacecraft

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

spacecraft

oh spacecraft, how you have evolved!  once upon a time it was 1954 or 5, and everybody still liked Ike, and he had that fabulous smile, and he seemed to do not much of anything and the presidency just happened.  it was only much later, reading autobiographical pieces about those times, that we learned how goddam much work it takes to make a presidency look as slick as that.  what, you might ask, has any of that to do with spacecraft?  well, you might recall that that was about the time I got dumped into this country and sometime around then I discovered science and spacecraft.  they were grim, like the times.  you could still see the bolts that held the bulkheads in place.  a spacecraft was kinda like a submarine in space, uncomfortable and close-fitting and just barely accommodating the humans it carried.  the sixties arrived, and we were actually building spacecraft, tiny little robots, then a sphere big enough to let a dog die in, then truncated cones just big enough for a pilot, two pilots, oh-my-god three pilots and a detachable lunar lander!  yep, spacecraft looked about as grim and hostile as science fiction writers had described them.  but science fiction writers were becoming friskier and merrier - like the times, with hippies and with college students dissenting with their government.  oh my god!  science fiction writers began to envision spacecraft, still steel but with paint and large portholes, more like picture windows than like Zen windows.  we haven't built those and probably never will.  we've learned how to work with carbon and create spacecraft that resemble friendly private aircraft that you can get up and move around in, exercise in, pour yourself a cup of coffee and drink it in, and even carry tourists into space in!  wow!  the Eisenhower science fiction writers not only wouldn't recognize today's spacecraft, but they'd disapprove of them.  spacecraft weren't for smiles in their day!  meanwhile, I've lost track of science fiction writers, but at least the Star Trek writers expect a huge vehicle something like a battleship and something like an integrated neighborhood in which almost everyone is white.  someday we might get even more optimistic than that!  on the other hand, it's hard to improve on a spacecraft that, just like Roy Rogers' gun, never needs refueling!  I enthusiastically await the successors to today's real spacecraft.  bless engineers and wealthy eccentrics!