[ExI] the formerly rich and their larvae...

[spike]

> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of 
> Bryan Bishop
...
> 
> I am reminded of:
> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=415652;cid=22012706
> 
> > In the mid-1960s my father worked for a contractor on the Apollo 
> > program. Realizing that once the moon rocket design was 
> > substantially complete, engineers would be superfluous...

Bryan, I can tell you as one who lived thru this period, the guy who wrote
it understated the case.  My father was on Apollo in the 60s, as were most
of the fathers in the neighborhood (Titusville Florida).  We saw all this
stuff first hand.  After Mercury, there was the follow-on Gemini, which had
the follow-on Apollo.  But after that, there were no follow-on programs.  

My father had been so busy leading up to that first moon launch that we had
no time to go on vacation for the couple years previous.  Then when Apollo
11 launched, we went on a family camping trip.  I was out of school, having
just finished third grade.  We watched the landing from a portable TV at
Juniper Springs.  My father knew when he came back from that weeklong
camping trip he would find a pink slip on his desk.  He was right. 

We saw plenty of engineers who loved the space program and wanted to stay
around, even if it meant underemployment for some time.  They started dippy
little businesses around town, few of which succeeded (competition for any
remaining money was just too great).  Many picked up and left town, walking
away from homes, mortgages abandoned, dreams shattered.  A few of the
workers just fell to ruin, some took up other lines of business.  Skylab
provided work for a few, but it really didn't start picking up again for ten
full years, until the space shuttle work started coming in.

Thanks for the article Bryan!

spike