21stCenturyWaves.com is again happily participating in the Carnival of Space #116.

This week the Carnival is at Habitation Intention.

I especially enjoyed Cumbrian Sky’s funeral for manned Moon and Mars missions — although I’m not particularly concerned by it.

Two things:

1) We’re near, at, or just past the bottom of the worst recession since the Great Depression. And it will take years to recover. So naturally gloom and doom prevail. But money’s not the real problem; we’ve just spent trillions of dollars on stimulus packages and bailouts….remember? It’s not money, it’s our national priorities, as usual. And they won’t change until something else does…

2) The good news is that about twice per century over the last 200 years there’s an amazing pulse of human exploration and major engineering activity that’s unparalleled for its time. The last pulse (i.e., a Maslow Window) was in the 1960s with Apollo, and before that was perhaps the most ebullient decade in U.S. history — when Teddy Roosevelt led the U.S. into the Peary/Panama Maslow Window. These extraordinary pulses extend all the way back to Lewis and Clark. And the next one is due near 2015.

Y.E. Yang becomes the latest symbol of South Korea’s ebullience! Click .

What’s interesting is that every Maslow Window except one (the Apollo decade) was preceded by a financial panic and deep recession — just like our current one — which is similar to the Panic of 1893 and the 1890s Recession. And remember, it was followed immediately by Teddy Roosevelt and his extraordinary Maslow Window. That’s likely to happen again within a few years, and then the really important change will occur: Our attitudes will become ebullient and for a short time, based on the last 200 years, we will believe that almost anything is possible.

Want a current example of ebullience? I suggest South Korea. They are already recovering from the global recession. Plus they’re preparing to launch their first satellite from their home space center on August 19. And last Sunday, Y.E. Yang of South Korea became Asia’s first male winner of a major golf championship, the U.S. PGA Championship. Yang did something no one else has ever done: He beat Tiger Woods, probably the best golfer of all time, despite the fact that Tiger started the final round with a lead over the field. Previously, when Woods led starting the final round of a professional tournament, he was 14 – 0.

Now that’s ebullience! Congratulations to everyone in South Korea and good luck on the 19th!

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