Last week, we took a trip to Orlando, Florida. It is becoming an annual tradition for us, as the AAU boy’s volleyball tournament is held there every year. As has been the case for the past couple of years, we stay a day after the tournament to do something fun as a family.

This year, we decided to go to the Kennedy Space Center. Robin and I had been there as kids and loved it. But, we also were there in the 80s when the space shuttle program was in full swing. And NASA isn’t in the current culture the way it used to be, so we were a little worried that the boys wouldn’t be into it. In the end, we had nothing to worry about.

Like most kids of the 80s, I was fascinated by space. We were exposed to the space program all the time, and we were all watching the Challenger launch live on TV when it exploded. Being at KSC was, for me, an emotional experience. I’ll chalk some of that up to my nerves being worn raw by the tournament, but it was more than that.

The attractions they’ve added in the 35 years since I was last there are amazing and pack a storytelling punch. They all follow a similar trope of showing you a short film about an aspect of the space program, and then lead you into a real-life artifact that blows you away. ”… and now, if you will enter these doors, here is the actual room where the moon launch was controlled.”

The one that really got me was the space shuttle Atlantis. Toward the end of its film, doors behind the screen open, and you see the silhouette of the shuttle. “Ladies and gentlemen, the space shuttle Atlantis.” The screen raises, and there it is at eye-level, mere feet in front of you.

I started crying, and I couldn’t stop. Again, I’ll blame some of it on exhaustion. But, there was something so humbling about being so close to something that meant so much to me as a kid. I’m welling up as I write. As I spent time just absorbing the enormity of the shuttle, I thought about my day spent with the history of America’s creativity, ingenuity, and courage.

We have a lot of space exploration news we hear, just not in the way we used to. We also saw Mars rovers, but they don’t have the same punch. And we hear about them so infrequently.

There’s a building starting to fill up with Artemis artifacts from SpaceX and Blue Origin, and it was there that I felt sad that the current space exploration landscape is so politicized. We would have never made it to the moon if not for private companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. But, our current crop of space visionaries are so damn unlikeable. Yet, I begrudgingly hope that Musk and Bezos succeed in their endeavors, because I want to see us go back to the moon and beyond.

There was no AI involved in the old space program. It was all human ingenuity, and it was all done with a lot less computing power than we have today. As interested as I am in the potential of AI, I won’t ignore the fact that humans are capable of amazing things without it.

In fact, as I stood nose to nose with Atlantis, the thought that looped was, “I think so small.” I get excited when I have an idea to mash together a couple of APIs to do something interesting, and feel like I’ve done something amazing. If you stand at the foot of a 171,000-pound spacecraft that has been to space and back and don’t think your own ideas are small, then you are a psychopath.