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From Space and Cold War to Broadband and Climate Change: Facing Challenges Requires Commitment

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, just 4 months in office, addressed a joint session of Congress. After detailing several threatening developments in SE Asia and the march of communism around the world (here comes Vietnam!), Pres. Kennedy concluded his speech by issuing a challenge to Congress and the American People. So stirring was the response - today is the 39th anniversary of that famous walk on the moon's surface - that no doubt to the surprise of the many doubters, it worked! And it provided scientific momentum for decades.

It's time to get busy again, it's time for bold leadership, again. This is what real leadership is like, challenging followers to a noble task related to a noteworthy vision, a task that will cause them pain but will make them more fully human, will lead them to a greater place. Here is the text of that speech, the money parts, near the end, quoted directly below.

Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.

Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of lead time, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations--explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.

Third, an additional 50 million dollars will make the most of our present leadership, by accelerating the use of space satellites for world-wide communications.

Fourth, an additional 75 million dollars--of which 53 million dollars is for the Weather Bureau--will help give us at the earliest possible time a satellite system for world-wide weather observation.

Let it be clear - and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make - let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal '62 - an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all.

Now this is a choice which this country must make, and I am confident that under the leadership of the Space Committees of the Congress, and the Appropriating Committees, that you will consider the matter carefully.

It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have lived through the last four years and have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of mastery of space.

I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further--unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.

I've included a call for local Broadband Leadership that I made on this website 17 months ago, after the jump. Yesterday, I made a similar call for local leadership regarding climate change (see A Time to Be Bold). We need leadership to move our nation away from burning carbon fuels - talking about our compelling need as a a society to change the way we make electricity, highlighting Al Gore's recent speech echoing JFK's challenge to the nation with a new one - 100% carbon-free electricity in 10 years. The problem is carbon fuels, the challenge is real, the response awaits.

Broadband Leadership? It Starts at Home

This article was written and published on MetroNetIQ on Feb 10, 2007.

I'm a little nostalgic tonight, as I sit here watching a DVD with my family - Apollo 13. I'm turning 50 this summer, so I was almost exactly my daughter's age (12 1/2) back in April 1970 when these events occurred. Seeing Act One of this movie, with all that good classic rock and roll in the soundtrack, and the launch scene of the Saturn V rocket, brought back memories of NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs, and I got nostalgic reminiscing about the "good old days" when our government actually charted out ambitious and visionary goals and we as a nation got behind them - and it all came together and it worked, albeit with adversity to work through. Sure, it worked, but it worked because we made it work, together.

We managed to get to the moon eight years after Pres. Kennedy, facing the challenge from the Soviets, proclaimed his challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and mobilized a nation on a truly historic path. It's still amazing. How fast we forget what we're capable of when we focus.

It wasn't a walk in the park either. We overcame the disaster of a fire on the launch pad on Apollo 1 that tragically took the lives of three astronauts, then we moved on to the success of Apollo 11, and then the program encountered this disaster on the Apollo 13 mission. The NASA team pulled together and brought the boys home, and they did it with slide rules and no PCs (and no broadband, by the way). I know that Hollywood and director Ron Howard have a way of putting a nice shine on things, and that nearly 40-odd years of hindsight help me to put the Apollo effort in perspective, and to gloss over the difficult times. Still, it seems that we had something then that we have lost...life seems at once more complicated and less clear, and our challenges greater and more numerous today than they were back then.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with broadband, anyway? Well, it's a coincidence, I guess, that a few hours before this movie, I started reading several blogs and Internet postings about a recent essay promoting a national broadband policy. Here's the blog on Cook's Collaborative Edge that kicked off this whole train of thought. After reading and surfing around, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the way the government took a leadership role in the Space Race back then (President Kennedy's famous challenge), and the general fumbling and failure of our leadership today to develop a national broadband policy (President Bush's assuring vision statement). Back then, we understood we would all have to work together, today, we're told "Don't worry, I assure you we'll get there" and then, in predictable fashion, we don't get there. And they wonder about declining trust in politics and government leadership.

So I'm struck by the difference between what we were able to do back in the 60s and 70s, with sheer will power, perseverance, and good old American can-do attitude, compared with what we are not doing today as a nation, as we watch countries like Japan, Korea, Sweden, and France, move ahead with strong national leadership and vison, as they implement a broadband strategy to create a national communications infrastructure that befits the 21st Century. Why is that? How come, I ask myself, broadband doesn't capture the imagination of people today the way that space exploration did back then? Well, for one, we've become pretty used to techological magic in the past 40 years. For another, we lack the leadership we had back then. No leadership focus, no national mobilization.

Personally, I wore out on this whole discussion and took a voluntary hiatus from the national broadband debate sometime last summer, as I became more focused on my own activities here in Central Texas. But a recent essay by metropolitan broadband luminary Jim Baller has brought me back to this topic, and its time to weigh in. Jim's essay really demands some inspection and review, as Jim is one of a handful of true experts in this field, and his tireless efforts to promote progress deserve this attention. I respect him.

So, Jim Baller wrote this essay on a National Broadband Strategy last month (January 2007), commenting on his article in the October 2006 issue of FiberPrism journal, where he and his partner opined on the need for a national broadband policy. In his recent essay, Jim takes a stab at a point-by-point program to get to such a policy. I recommend both of these articles.

Doing a little more digging, I came up with this article cited in the essay: in Foreign Affairs magazine, Thomas Bleha comments on the need for a national broadband policy, back in Summer 2005. In a follow up article, Philip J. Weiser takes a slightly different tack and we have also the commentary from Bleha. All this talk about broadband policy in the US, amidst all this action abroad (see this link for a good update on OECD broadband activities, circa June 2006).

I have to admit that I've become disenchanted with the long wait for national leadership in this area. In fact, I've structured a career that doesn't depend on national leadership - I'm putting my money on local leadership. I've met enough impressive local leaders that give me confidence. I still hope for national leadership that will mobilize the public on this issue and will focus resources to get our country moving, so that we will be competitive over time.

But I have to say, we could all grow old waiting for the powers that be to get serious about wiring up our country with fiber optics to the "last mile." It was three years ago that President Bush, in his style, laid out a vision for Ubiquitous Broadband by 2007, and then his administration failed ot follow up on it. We had a couple of blogs on this topic on this site a full 18 months ago, here and here. So, its out of my control, and in Stephen Covey Seven Habits fashion, I suggest that we focus on what we can control in order to get results and make progress, and that, my friends, starts at the local level. Better, in my opinion, to get busy to get local projects underway, to start generating the lessons learned and all the little steps that need to be done to move a country forward, collectively, in this area.

I trust that real leaders like Jim Baller and others will continue to work to motivate our national political leaders, and that a National Broadband Policy Task Force will someday get organized and busy on doing the necessary heavy lifting to get the full weight of the country's resources behind this effort. But as for me, I'll keep doing my little part to move things forward, by showing that we can do something today, and that something is to get individual cities wired up, with wireless and with wired broadband networks, and where possible, to get regions to collaborate.

But part of me longs for the type of leadership and can-do spirit, the imagination and chutzpa we had a generation ago in this nation, the "right stuff" that would send men up in tin cans into space, and bring them back alive, just to show that we could. I feel better when I reflect on that - that same kind of spirit still resides in the hearts of local leaders that initiate and promote these municipal wireless projects and see them through. In our own way, here in the 21st Century, we are pushing out the envelope on technology in a myriad of ways, and forging new paths, if on a less dramatic stage than back then.

And so it goes, as I approach 50. My own dreams, like those of our nation, are a little scaled down now, in this more complex world of the 21st Century, where I find myself as an adult. But I'm now a player in the game, rather than a spectator. After all, there is undeniable progress on the digital front. I watched this movie on a DVD on my flat screen TV, whereas I watched the Apollo moon landing on a tiny black and white screen as a budding teenager. I'm active in spreading broadband connectivity at the local level, and I'm blogging on a laptop in my living room, as I watch the movie.

And .. oh yeah, as a postscript, the Apollo crew made it back down to earth, in one piece, thanks to the thousands of people on the earth that supported them. Our dreams may be more distributed today, more "down to earth," if you will, but we're still pushing out the frontiers. And the wireless networks we build are going up thanks to the thousands of people in this new industry who are helping to make it all happen.

Posted on July 20, 2008 at 06:01 AM

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