Where’s my Flying Car and Ticket to the Moon? Dammit!

Looking through those old Popular Science magazines of the 1960’s brings about a sense of deception, of loss. Where’s those promised aerial cars, those $500K trips to the Moon?

The answer lies not in engineering or physics, but in bureaucracy. Behold the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The Law simply states that when government intrudes outside its core responsibilities, it always has negative effects that are unintended. Consider prohibition, and how this ended up enriching Al Capone and cost thousands of lives.

The aerospace industry is one of the most heavily regulated in our nation. I discovered this as an engineer in the 1990’s working on new space launch vehicles.

The FAA, ITAR-DDTC, OSHA, ATFE, EPA, DHS, NRC are just some of the many alphabet soup bureaucracies that you would have to struggle through to make the above dreams possible. The practical effect of all this unnecessary regulation? Stifled innovation, systems that never see the light of day due to the cost of regulation. Add on top of that a litigation system way out of control.

In a perfect world painted by visionaries like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, you go to work in a flying car - powered by redundant rotary engines. A computer automatically routes you to work along a virtual highway in the sky while you enjoy the morning paper and cup of coffee. This technology has been around for almost thirty years.

Your once-in-a-lifetime cruise is to the Moon. Affording the $500K ticket for you and your wife was quite possible, since in this perfect America socialist welfare programs and a private Federal Reserve don’t exist. Uncle Sam takes 8% of your income, tops, the same rate as before the Federal Reserve and IRS were created in 1913.

The takeoff point for your voyage is Nevada. A nuclear-powered single stage to orbit booster takes you to a commercial space station, and from there another transport flies you to the Moon. The idea of some un-washed environmental kook stopping these flights could not even be imagined. This booster creates little in terms of radioactive emissions due to the use of helium fuel.

So… where are we at today? Everything I mentioned here is quite possible from an engineering and physics standpoint, and has been for decades. It’s not consumer demand that has doomed these ideas, it simply is the impossibility of getting these ideas rammed through regulatory agencies.

If you want an America where every problem should be solved by big government, then continue to vote for those who will foist more bureaucracy upon the American people. Be prepared to enjoy a lifetime of mediocrity and unfulfilled dreams.

If you believe that these Soviet-style bureaucracies kill off American innovation, then vote for those who believe as Ronald Reagan did: Those who govern least, govern best!


Hugh Farnham is a space systems engineer and inventor. He is a conservative Libertarian.