LUCKY ME

      Lucky me, blessed with a caring, brilliant, conversational son. Some years ago, in what was in retrospect an overly-ambitious move, we founded the Interstellar Propulsion Society, on the idea that once we get the propulsion problem solved, everything else will come together to make interstellar travel possible. It got to be much too ambitious an effort and soon faltered, but fortunately NASA picked up on the idea and funded Marc Millis of  Glenn Research Center to carry out further studies. That soon ran out of money, but Marc went on to  organize the Tau Zero Foundation, which operates toward the same general objectives. That is not the only thing in play. Recently DARPA funded what is called the “100 Year Starship Study” to examine some of the issues related to interstellar travel.
         
    The other night Jon and I were discussing the desperate plight of the countless fifty-year old engineers who have lost their jobs and cannot find a similar one even after searching and interviewing for years, finally ending up in occupations paying a third or less of their former salaries. This is a tragedy in work for individuals and their families, as well as for the nation. These people represent an enormous collective talent, with thirty or more years of experience, far along on the learning curve, possessing a historical knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and in all likelihood would return  steady and faithful performance to anyone hiring them.

     We ended up speculating on what we would do were we to start up a new company. We concluded that our best chance at success would be to hire no one under fifty years of age.  Imagine...... starting up a company of twenty employees with 600 years of experience under their belts. How could you lose?