Will Our Kids Understand Concorde? Do we?

In an extraordinary achievement, at about the end of what we call the "Dark Ages", the Vikings sent small ships across the ocean a thousand years ago, but then they stopped and though the age was no longer dark it was almost another 500 years before anyone else achieved a feat of exploration as significant. It happens that this, my first trip to London in more than 18 years coincides with the final flight of the Concorde as reported by Justin Knol amongst many others. For 28 years Concorde has routinely sent 100 people at a time across the same ocean in a tiny fraction of the time it took Leif Ericson to make the journey, indeed in half the time that any other modern travelers take for the journey, but now we're stopping this extraordinary achievement as well. New York and London are now farther apart than they were yesterday. How long will it be, I wonder, before they're just three hours apart again?

All of London does seem to be abuzz about this event, and I can understand why. Concorde is a thing of beauty to see. It is not beautiful to hear, of course, and economically it has proven to be a failure, but still it has been the most lasting tribute, IMHO, to the technological advances of the 1960s. The UK and France are justifiably proud of Concorde for that. Now, like the Apollo spacecraft and so many other things, I suppose it will become a museum piece.

That's too bad, because museum displays just don't convey enough of the pure excitement of great achievements. I know that my kids don't have any concept of the world-wide excitement that race to the moon generated for those of us who were kids in the 60s. The Concorde and the (canceled) American SST were products of that same exciting time, and so much of the technology we rely on every day came of age as a direct or indirect result of the fact that the aerospace industry was out to accomplish great things both in space and on earth in that decade.

So, how does one explain to the next generation that we sent a dozen men to the moon 30 years ago, and then we stopped; or that we sent a hundred people at a time across the ocean at twice the speed of sound on a routine basis for 28 years, but then we stopped. If we can't explain it to our kids, what does that say about us? I wonder about that. I also wonder about this: what if the great powers of Europe had stopped sending their ships to the Americas 30 years after Columbus? Have we forgotten that pushing the boundaries that we know about is what has always helped us find and surpasss the boundaries we don't yet know about?