Bill Gates of late had a phone call with President - elect Donald Trump . And Gates was impressed . He even compared Trump to John F. Kennedy , explaining that JFK drive the nation to keep going the Apollo place syllabus . According to Gates , Trump will get people worked up about his initiatives . One of the many problem with Gates ’ argument ? Kennedy did n’t really succeed at get the majority of Americans to support Apollo .
I ’ve written about this beforeat distance . But the short adaptation is that our corporate memory board about the Apollo quad program is really warped . If you ask someone today how much public support the place program had in the sixties , most masses would probably guess 80 or 90 percentage . In reality , support for the programme swing between 35 and 45 percent throughout the entireness of the 1960s . The one clip it got above 50 percent ? The months border the first moon landing in July of 1969 .
“ In the same way President Kennedy talked about the space mission and got the country behind that , ” Gates toldCNBC today , “ I think whether it ’s education or stopping epidemics … [ or ] in this energy space , there can be a very upbeat message that [ Trump ’s ] administration [ is ] run to organize thing , get disembarrass of regulatory barriers , and have American leadership through innovation . ”
So whether you hold with Bill Gates and his judgement of Trump or not , it ’s important to remember that funding for the Apollo program was oppose by the absolute majority of Americans . Why then do we have this bizarre computer memory of the curriculum ? you’re able to blame the baby boomers like Gates .
The babe boomers were kids during the Apollo space program . And when you ’re a kid you do n’t have much to worry about in the way of paying the bills or public policy . You certainly do n’t have fully organize political ideas about , say , ways that government funds can be well used than nail people into space .
But that was precisely what materialize . Baby baby boomer , as child of the 1960s , just remember the speeches on idiot box and watching the moonlight landing place . They do n’t remember that the majority of Americans ( American adults , as those are the people who get polled ) guess that the Apollo space programme was a waste of money .
Roger Launius , chief historian at NASA , put it best in a 2005 paper : “ While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight , the primary one is the storey of a resolute nation move outwards into the unknown beyond Earth . ”
We were not a unhesitating nation moving outward together . We were , as we always have been , a very fractured nation go in many different directions at once . But the someone channelise the ship commonly gets his direction . And like it or not , Trump is about to steer our ship .
[ CNBC ]
Apollo programBill GatesDonald TrumpMicrosoftpresident trump
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