Next week, it will be thirty years since the last Apollo mission to the Moon.

Many, perhaps most of the people who made that feat happen are either retired or no longer with us. Those remaining are the institutional memory of the early days of the space program. NASA is trying to preserve it, and more recent experience, by interviewing and capturing the knowledge of their veterans, while it's still available to do so.

Back in the fifties and sixties, we were building new launch systems and high-performance aircraft every year or two--it was a veritable assembly line of aerospace innovation, with a wide variety of projects for people to work on, and develop cutting-edge (at the time) technology. However, we've slowed down greatly since then, and put into place cumbersome government procurement procedures, with set program phases tied inextricably to unavoidable budget cycles, to the point that major interesting programs are now few and far between, and ponderously slow.

This has two results. First, within her career, your average engineer gets to work on many fewer programs these days, resulting in correspondingly less, and less diverse experience. Second, it's a much less fascinating career with which to draw in some of the best and brightest of our technologists. Nanotechnology, biomedical breakthroughs, computer graphics--all of these presently offer much greater challenges and excitement than aerospace engineering in general and NASA in particular.

Sadly, much of this knowledge was never written down, or if it was, it has been tossed out, like old cancelled checks and tax records. When I was working at Rockwell International a dozen years ago, President Bush (the first) announced a desire to go back to the Moon and Mars. I wanted to resurrect the computer codes that had calculated the lunar trajectories during Apollo. I discovered that the last set of cardboard punchcards (which were the only way it had been stored) containing them had been disposed of a few weeks before.

Now, all of the hard-won knowledge that accumulated during the heady days of the X-15, and Apollo, and Ranger and Mariner, and dozens of other programs of which most today have never even heard, is dissipating into retirement or the grave. Worse, many of the things that these people know are less science than art, and not easily condensed into a textbook.

How to design a stable rocket propellant injector? How to shape a wing that will get a plane from the speed of an everyday airliner, through the turbulent hurricane fury of the transonic region, into a supersonic realm in which it outraces the sound of its own engines?

Some of these people, if in good health, remain available for consulting, but once in the grave, their secrets are lost to us forever, and in some ways, it sets us back years, and even decades.

NASA is to be commended for this program to capture what's about to be lost forever. Anything we can do to hold on to the fragile knowledge base that took us to the Moon, or even, with all their flaws, built the Space Shuttle and other more modern programs, will reduce costs in the future should we once again revive the spirit necessary to take great steps on the high frontier.

Even from program white elephants (like the International Space Station) and total failures (like X-33) there are lessons to be learned, though sadly, unlike the lessons of the early space age, those lessons are lessons of management caution, and more about what things not to do, than how to do them. This just goes to show that no program is utterly worthless--it can always serve as a bad example for a case study.

And along those lines, as the article points out, this ongoing exodus of industry and agency personnel represents a double edged sword, and reveals a silver lining to the retirement cloud.

As mentioned in the Washington Post article linked above, it's healthy for the industry to turn over its personnel, and bring in new blood. For at least some old dogs, the adage about new tricks is certainly true.

Yes, we're losing a lot of valuable knowledge and experience. On the other hand, we're also losing a lot of false certainties and misunderstood experience that's been holding us back for years, particularly among management. There's an old saying that "it's not so much what folks don't know that hurts them, as much as the things they know for darned sure that are wrong."

They know that we cannot have lower launch costs without new "technology."

They know that it takes billions of dollars to develop a new "low-cost" launch system.

They know that, unlike airplanes, launch vehicles require devices to blow up the vehicle if the slightest thing goes wrong.

They know that, unlike airplanes, putting pilots in space transports increases both development and operational costs by a large factor.

They know that no one in their right mind would pay money for a ride into space.

They know that only governments can fund space activities.

In other words, many in the industry remain certain of things that are absolutely wrong. Particularly (and sadly) many of them are in positions of authority, and with power over budgets, and program go-aheads, and young engineers' lives and careers.

Which is why, based on their sage and invalid advice, the new NASA administrator can also make mistaken pronouncements, to the detriment of progress.

I mourn the knowledge being lost. We must do everything possible to not only capture and preserve it, but honor those who achieved so much decades ago, and march forward on the shoulders of those giants.

At the same time, I rejoice at the thought that many of those who remain mired in the myths of the past will no longer hold us back.

We must hold on to the good, and build on it, while remembering that the Cold War is long over, and build a new space age on its unlamented ashes.

The torch has been passed to a new generation.

Marty Davis is a great guy. Doctrinaire libertarians could probably find something to attack in his career. But I'm glad he's participating in this project. He has lots of things to pass on.

There was another guy I was acquainted with at Goddard -- Lou Walter. Lou was also involved in NASA from the early 60s. Lou was also one helluva a great guy. The people running this oral history project can't interview Lou now -- he died a few years ago.

I'll make an interesting aside about both Marty and Lou. Both were involved in Goddard's Music and Drama Club. MAD, as it's locally known, puts on a number of productions each year. There are a number of quite talented people involved in the group. I suspect participation in something not closely related to your work helps keep you flexible and capable of learning new things. While it's certainly not fashionable to say it these days, all work and no play make Jack(Jane) a (intellectually) dull (as in lacking sharpness) boy(girl).

I'll relate one very brief story about Lou. A year or two (1997-1998) before I finally bailed from Goddard, Lou and I were at a MAD rehearsal. Quite out of the blue, Lou said to me "Chuck, with your skills, you should get out of here." That's an extremely bad commentary on what NASA has become.

Oh, to utterly confuse anyone who wants to attack me, these days I call myself an exponent of "democratic libertarianism with human face, seen in the light of the Copenhagen Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics."

Science fiction writers promised us a hardware future, rocket ships, space stations, an autogyro for everyone. That just hasn't happened. We've abandoned that vision for a software future, just as we've abandoned achievement for celebrity, instead of a real future we've gone for the soft, peacetime option, a software simulcra.

Cardboard punchcards took us to the moon, now we need space based GPS to get us to the mall. Without cold war competition no politician is going to spend billions on a project which will only get him flak and his successor but two re-elected when it pays off.

The ISS has been a disaster, Columbus didn't spend ten years pottering around the bay to test his systems, who can name two people who've been up there? Who even knows that it's up there at all?

We have all the power and none of the desire and it matters because decadent societies die, when humans stop exploring their society is stagnant. We have a wonderful standard of living because of, not despite, the money spent on science, technology and innovation. Who's to say we'll have the ability to do it in fifty years time? Nations which turned their back on the ocean e.g. imperial china, doomed themselves to stagnation and eventual collapse and we are doing the same. Every successful society needs a project, in the past they've been the building of empires (rome, Britain) or vast religious construction projects (the pyramids etc) we need a project to unite us and give us some purpose.

What will the 20th century be remembered for? Two world wars, nuclear weapons and Neil Armstrong. What's the 21st going to be remembered for? Reality TV? We've e mail and cell phones and we've nothing to say. Lets do Mars Direct, let's say boys you've a five percent chance of not coming back but a 100% chance of becoming heroes. People would queue up from New York to Florida. The safer we are the more scared of the slightest risk we become.

Carbon nanotubes will make the space elevator buildable within ten years. Lets do it, once we can put weight into high orbit cheaply the solar system is ours. Lets do it. I was just too young to remember the moon landings, i grew up waiting for men to land on mars, i know have to tell my children that they might, just might see men on mars?

Thirty years before Apollo there were bi planes in front line service for heavens sake. We pride ourselves on technology but radio and cars and telephones are a hundred years old, colour tv and nuclear power and space flight and anti biotics are fifty years old. Half a century. Let's wake up and get back out there.

Well... yes and no. Don't get me wrong. These guys used ingenious methods to get us into orbit and to the moon. And some of it is timeless and invaluable knowledge. But, an awful lot of it is also stuff that was ginned up to circumvent the severe limitations of yesterday's technology. Case in point: the cards you mention. How difficult is it to calculate lunar trajectories with standard orbital analysis tools on a Sun workstation these days? (answer: not very).