To be precise, I mean the future as we once saw it. Take the space shuttle. I remember a time - it feels just like a few years ago - that I was watching the first test flight of the space shuttle. I don't mean it's first space flight. No! That was still a few years away. I mean when space shuttle Enterprise was loaded onto the back of a jumbo jet and flown around for a bit.
At that time, I was impatiently moaning to myself that I couldn't wait for this thing to actually get up into space. I mean, how exciting would that be? A big plane zooming up into space and then coming back to land again, refuelling, before taking off and doing another round trip to Venus or wherever. Fantastic. Holidays would never be the same again. Forget Newquay. Hello the moon and the stars.
That test flight was 34 years ago today. Yes - 34 years. And what has happened in that time? The whole space shuttle programme has come and gone (losing two of them on the way) and it is now going into retirement. The future arrived, did some stuff and then went away again. No holidays in space. Nothing. Even poor old Enterprise never made it into space. It had been named after the original Star Trek series which itself came back to life, had four spin-off series (Next generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager & Enterprise), a host of feature films (at least ten) and now even all of those have run their course. Why does the future have to run out like that?
Anyway, here is a clip of that famous jumbo/Enterprise combo taking off - sadly not the exciting test flight from 18 February 1977 (I couldn't find a clip of that). It is still pretty impressive though and so very graceful - Enterprise, complete with a big ice-cream plug over its engines, strapped to the back of the jumbo. And like any ice cream, you never want it to end.
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