HOTELS IN SPACE AND JET PACKS. NOW WE'RE TALKING!

For those of us wondering where our Great Scientific Future went, there's good news on the horizon. In the space of two days it has been announced that there will soon be sightseeing tours of space and that within a year a practical jet pack will be introduced. Richard Branson, of Virgin Airlines and hot-air balloon fame, has unveiled the first jet of his two-vehicle space tourist bus, telling the world that within 20 years there will also be a Space Hotel orbiting the planet and offering side trips to the moon. Then John Schwartz of New Zealand, of no fame at all until now, unveils his personal jet pack and the news that it will be on the market within the year. Now we're cooking!

Naturally in this ying and yang world, good news is always accompanied by bad news. The bad news is that only the wealthy can afford to participate in this Brave New World of Tomorrow. One feels like an isolated tribesman in some impenetrable rain forest watching jet planes fly overhead, wondering why he's still stuck in a loin cloth with a blow gun and a bow and arrow, squatting in his straw hut for months on end during the rainy season eating dried iguana meat. But at least it's a start.

For those of us weaned on watching men walk on the moon, futuristic World's Fair exhibits and optimistic predictions of a high tech, galaxy-striding society of mankind going where no one has gone before, well, the present has been decidedly pedestrian, cell phones and world wide webs notwithstanding. We see a world choking on the fumes of fossil fuels and fighting over the last few drops, making constant war on one another and plagued with mass starvation. The last chapter of our history books depicting a Jetsons type existence for humanity never did come to pass. For some reason our exciting space exploration program has devolved into a cargo business delivering satellites to orbit the earth and beam reality shows into our living rooms. At least they did put a giant telescope out there to send us tantalizing pictures of what might have been.

So now we're not only disappointed, but plagued with moronic TV shows and teased with fantastic photographs of the Final Frontier we'll never see. What happened to the plans of creating giant space stations to use as launching pads, gravity-free springboards to the Universe? What about mining asteroids for treasures and combing the galaxy for adventure and colonization? And back here on Mother Earth, where's our flying cars, our moving sidewalks, sky high playgrounds, the giant glass-enclosed super farms to feed the world? Here we are still washing our own smelly internal combustion cars, with no robots in sight to do our chores and help the kids with their math homework!

But there's still a glimmer of hope. When automobiles and air travel were first introduced, only the wealthy could afford these luxuries. What's needed now is a new Henry Ford, a mass-production genius to build affordable gadgets so the average person can get in on the Space Age action. Who needs another damned iPod? Nobody but teenagers can figure them out anyway. Give us some clean energy sources, some way to get around other than 5 miles per hour traffic jams, a couple of robots to order around or even a kitchen that cleans its own damn self. Something, anything, Throw us a futuristic bone here!

Maybe to a lot of people, Richard Branson and John Schwartz are eccentric lunatics wasting their time and money, but it's their time and money to do with as they see fit. A lot of people thought the Wright brothers were nuts too, and who knows? Maybe they were a couple of guys you'd cross the street to avoid. But does anybody reading this know anybody who has never flown, something that was considered impossible when some people who are still alive were born. And who was nuttier than Benjamin Franklin standing in the rain with his kite trying to attract lightning? Or Neil Armstrong trusting the scientists who sent him there to actually set foot on the moon? Let the daring lunatics get busy and deliver the future.