There’s a lot in the world to be pessimistic about right now. When Trump was elected, I screamed inside. I didn’t know what kind of country I was going to wake up to the following morning. The country was so vehemently sexist and so full of hatred and anger, that they voted for a malignant, racist, narcissist over arguably the most qualified presidential candidate to ever exist in the history of our country. Now that the mid-term elections are nearing, my mood is in a word: pessimistic. Because of gerrymandering, and because half the country is under the thrall of conservative state TV (Fox), and because terrorist acts perpetrated by violent white men have happened in recent days, I have doubts that normal democratic processes will actually endure this coming election day.
But something happened to me today that actually had me sobbing in my car on my way home, and sobbing even as I write these words. My V.P. of Engineering is hands down one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. Because he is getting on in years, I am sometimes the repository of his pearls of wisdom. He said something that was so prescient today, that I felt like I could, just for a moment, glimpse past the micro-problems of our day, and it had me gasping.
ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are responsible for delivering nuclear warheads. After the rocket fuel is exhausted, the ICBM is essentially radio silent. If it isn’t radio silent than foreign enemies can hack into it and possibly jam it. If the rocket is essentially dumb/unhackable and radio silent, than how possibly can it reach it’s destination, and within feet of it?
They launched test missiles from Edwards Air Force Base in California into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, using only simple Newtonian physics to drive them, but the missiles they launched did not reach their goal. When they relaunched the same missile after tweaking what they thought was a faulty rocket motor, the same result happened. Then some smart person realized they needed to do more than use simple idealized trajectories. The missiles had been pulled off course by tiny changes in gravity during flyover.
So this is how we solved it. We MAPPED the earth’s gravitational disturbances. We launched a fleet of satellites and tracked their speeds and altitudes as they orbited the Earth. The extra gravitation pull from a mountain range, we logged it. The placid pull from the oceans, we mapped it. Even the minute fluctuations of the ground water, we recorded. Any ICBM that will ever be launched will be launched with a single set of mathematical coordinates. Without ever having any sensorial input on where it is in space, it will reach its target, having taken into account every ditch, hill, stream it will have passed. This might be the first and last time a gargantuan feat of science and engineering had me so awestruck, that I literally trembled in my socks.
This is WHY North Korea will be decades away from launching an accurate nuclear warhead on an ICBM, if they ever will. This is WHY we will eventually reverse global warming. This is why, even though our White House and Congress, and perhaps even our Supreme Court, is full of nincompoops, we will eventually come out on top.
The technical brilliance within our country is astounding. The technical talent is so deep, that even now it is not fully realized.
The depth and magnitude of our labor resources is breathtaking.
We WILL pull through this. If not in this election cycle, then the next, or a couple of decades from now. Our country, even our planet, might be under threat, but we WILL meet this challenge. The next time I am feeling pessimistic about my country, or the world even, I should look back on this moment when I was awestruck.
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