Dear Mr. Secretary …
… It is past time for another bold national committment. An ‘Apollo 21′ project for domestic transportation infrastructure development will provide an efficient economic base for securing the growth of the U.S. economy into the 21st century.
“That goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” – JFK
NOTE – On this 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, one of the greatest acheivements demonstrating the tremendous power of free world ingenuity and productivity, V1 is re-posting its open letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. This letter was originally sent to Mr. LaHood on February 9, when the U.S. Congress was cobbling together the foundations of the stimulus spending bill. The letter was intended to draw attention to the tremendous opportunity which exists for stimulus money to be directed into growth-oriented 21st century transportation projects, instead of toward one-time maintenance of 20th century infrastructure. The re-creation of aviation infrastructure as a collection of ubiquitous utilities and tradable commodities is a key component of the proposal.
Mr. Secretary,
I am requesting your support for investigating a national transportation concept which I believe has great potential for expanding the American economy into the 21st century.
Our nation needs a bold national challenge which will alter the course of current events. When President John Kennedy issued his famous challenge to our nation in 1961, ‘(to land) a man on the moon’ before 1970, the U.S. economy was in a year- long recession. More importantly, the primary reason for embarking on that course was to establish national technological superiority over our most threatening ideological adversary at the time; the former Soviet Union. At the time of President Kennedy’s challenge, the technology for ensuring the successful achievement of that goal did not even exist.
Things are not so very different now. Instead of facing a near-term threat from a sovereign super power, our nation faces pervasive threats from a global borderless ideology, a mounting national debt held by foreign governments, and a scarcity of resources in a shrinking global economic environment. While it has been established that technological superiority is, at times, limited against these threats, our disproportionate consumption of global resources has emerged as perhaps our newest and most exploitable vulnerability.
V1 believes America has been presented with a compelling opportunity to begin mitigating the unfavorable dynamics of these issues through the commitment to a single Apollo-like program. This program would employ already emerging technology in a new paradigm of economic structure to vastly reduce our consumption of global resources. Engaging in this endeavor now would provide near-term stimulus to our nation’s economy, as well as an enduring transportation infrastructure for efficiently expanding our economy into the 21st century.
Download the entire letter here.
