My grandfather who was born in 1901 once mentioned that, during his lifetime, the Wright brothers flew at Kittyhawk and men walked on the moon.
My grandfather who was born in 1901 once mentioned that, during his lifetime, the Wright brothers flew at Kittyhawk and men walked on the moon.
The Wrights flew by their own finance and ingenuity. Then they immediately tried to patent and license their ideas and stifled American innovation in aviation for more than a decade.
NASA flew to the moon in an international dick measuring contest. It took people like Howard Hughes to make space economically useful to the masses. I wonder who the Elon Musk of the 1950s & 60s would have been had NASA not held a monopoly on rocketry.
This comment has been bugging me for a while, but I didn't quite know how to respond until now. Before I go into my issues with it, I'd like you to know that I shared your original post on LinkedIn, so I write this not just for you, but for a broader audience.
Much as I understand the argument for patents stifling innovation (though I don't necessarily agree with it, that is a discussion for another time), I was always under the impression that American aviation was slow to develop simply because of lack of interest. William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin (British, not American, but the point still stands), famously said that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," and while that doesn't explain birds, given his status, many people stubbornly continued to believe him even after he was proven wrong. Bear in mind, this was in the days of balloons and early dirigibles, both of which worked better than the first aeroplanes. There are many more examples of people dismissing the idea of the aeroplane out of ignorance and complacency, so I think I'll stick with the saying "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" on this one.
Regarding your second point - you're absolutely right. Once again, however, lack of interest was a bit of a problem, hence no further space exploration for decades once the race to the moon was over. If the public voted not to continue and thus de-fund NASA, I'm sure that no private space venture would have gotten off the ground - literally (I'm speaking strictly of civilian space flights, not satellite launches). I'm not sure, were there no international competition between the USA and USSR, that innovation in rocketry would have ever advanced to the point that it did in 1969. Furthermore, both powers built on previous experiments performed by the Nazis for the purpose of war. I wonder, had the travesty that was Nazi Germany never existed, would rocketry have ever become as advanced as it did? Perhaps it would by now, given that advancements in one area of technology can affect another. My favourite example is that my Ti-89 graphing calculator has more computing power than all of Houston did in 1969. My second-favourite is that guided missiles and ROVs were once the pinnacle of military ordinance - now they are literal child's play.
The Wrights spent the next decade plus after Kitty Hawk in litigation against rival aviation pioneers in the US. Meanwhile, their European counterparts advanced by leaps and bounds.
I'm quite familiar with the patent war; its affect on American aviation is disputed, which is why I think there's more to the story. After all, the Wrights sued several European aircraft manufacturers as well. The French ruled in the Wrights' favour; the Germans didn't. Furthermore, none of the Wrights' litigation seemed to stop Glenn Curtiss, who famously said "if someone jumped into the air and flapped their arms, the Wrights would sue."