Reinventing The Wheel (From CL165 Aug 2004)
By: Jeff Garbutt, Western Australia



Just last month (July 2004) was the 35th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. But did you also realise that it has been 32 years (in December2004) since the last time man walked on the moon? Which made me look around my place of work and realise that most of my colleagues were born after all the moonwalks happened.

The incredible thing is - not so much that the Apollo Project happened with 1960s technology - but that with our current state of technology we cannot replicate that feat. And even though NASA has been given the mandate to go back to the moon - it is going to take them several years to re-invent how to do it. It is not just a simple matter of finding the original plans for the rockets and space capsules - it is also the intellectual knowledge on how to do it that needs to be re-kindled, the tools used to build it all that probably don't exist anymore, the computer systems are completely different and many other considerations that will have to be re-invented. An analogy is trying to re-build a horse drawn buggy with tools that don't exist anymore and knowledge that few (if any) people still posses. All in all it is going to be a major undertaking almost as big as the original Moon program.

In a similar vein many of us can remember our square dance programs from past times. And sometimes we wish that we could go back to those times (before Plus and Advanced for instance.) But even if everyone agreed that we should go back - is it possible? Somehow I don't think so.

So we have to move forward - we can't look back. But just like NASA has to re-invent how to get back to the Moon - we may find ourselves re-inventing how to make square dancing popular again. And just like the challenge of getting back to the moon is going to be exciting for the new breed of NASA gurus - it is going to be equally exciting for us to revitalise square dancing. I hope you will all be there on our upcoming "journey" to enjoy this challenge.