From the media you get the impression that there is an awfully lot of important stuff going on: dudes with diapers on their heads held in place by fan belts are blowing themselves up in Turkish baths, nitwits are putting their wife and kids in trunks along with the family dog and throwing the whole mess in San Francisco Bay and politicians who want to run our lives are lying about their past, present and future deeds and misdeeds

Actually, of course, it’s all unimportant crap. I mean who cares now about Judge Crater, the Black Hole of Calcutta or the Tea Pot Dome? At the time it occurred the Wright Brothers’ flight wasn’t reported, Hertz’s experiments in his laboratory were definitely not news, and Oberts’ book was read by Werner Von Braun. Yet these things had more of an effect on our lives and history than the Titanic going down with Mr. Astor and his valet.

In the last few weeks two things happened that were reported on page 8 of section C in the paper and perhaps even got 15 seconds on the boob tube but I doubt that they made that much of a stir. The first was an actual accomplishment, the second a possible happening. The first was a milestone that was bound to happen and is just a baby step, but it is the beginning of the beginning. The second, if it turns out to be what it looks like, will rival the invention of the steam engine. It really could mark a new comin’ era. Did I really write that? Oh dear.

First, in the high desert of California a young fellow of 63 years with none of the right stuff left climbed into a rocket-powered spaceship at an airport yet. And he flew – yes, flew – the damned thing into outer space, well maybe inner space but who cares which kind of space it was. The two-stage vehicle, both parts of which were recovered, were a rocket-powered glider attached to a more conventional aircraft that carried the rocket into the stratosphere or perhaps mesosphere where they lit the fuse and the rocket plane climbed more than 400 feet above the official boundary of nothing.

Forty years ago I worked on a super sneaky project called Dyna Soar. Since there are two words in the name you know it must have been truly sneaky. The idea was to build an air breathing rocket plane that could fly – yes, fly – into orbit and glide back to the high dessert of California. The government in its infinitesimal wisdom cut off the funds. They needed the money to make an intercontinental ballistic missile the size of a high-rise apartment building so that they could deliver an H-bomb to Boris Badanoff. Oh yes, to placate the public they claimed it would be a jolly way to send a man into orbit for only a few tens-of-thousands of times what the commercially sponsored dudes used to accomplish the same thing.

In case you think I exaggerate the stupidity and profligate waste of money our government gets itself involved in, consider that you can’t use a ballpoint pen in low gravity and low pressure. The wackos in DC sponsored several multi-thousand dollar research projects to solve the problem. The Russians used a pencil.

The second got nearly no press. A dude in West Lafayette, Indiana, blew bubbles in a jar of deuterium. Oh no, not cold fusion again! Oh yes, but this time there seemed to be a gaggle of neutrons created. If you manage to get hydrogen isotopes to fuse into helium isotopes, you get enough energy from a bomb the size of a pickup truck to make a crater the size of Columbus, Ohio. Even if you only get enough energy from a beaker of deuterium to drive from the Bowery to Pleasantville, you will get a gaggle of neutrons. This is the first cold fusion experiment where neutrons were detected. If it’s true, it is like glowing punk All we need is to lay it on some tinder, blow a bit, and have a very little manageable sun on our workbench.

We can use the fossil fuel for a pomade to slick down camel’s fur. Take that, OPEC.