The Children of Daedalus

We Remain The Same, We Ache For The Stars

Name means "cunningly wrought"

Maker of Labyrinth, maze for Minotaur

Reward? Imprisonment in tower

Hack an escape out by going UP

Wings for self & son

Son didn't listen, reached for sun, wings melted

Still same, we strive for skies, ache for stars

We are The Children of Daedalus

Daedalus was the maker of the Labyrinth, a great mazelike prison for the Minotaur, the half-man, half-beast of Crete. His name meant "cunningly wrought".

His reward for genius? Imprisonment in a high tower for knowing too much. Today, he would have been an engineer who built a containment facility that he was locked up in for being too important. Just look up Sergei Korolev.

Daedalus hacked his way out, to escape out by going UP.

He created wings for himself and his son Icarus. He taught his son to avoid being too close to the sun and stay above the ocean's waters. Icarus didn't listen. He reached for the sun, his wings melted apart. He drowned in the ocean.

Nothing has changed since ancient times.

We strive for the skies. Our desire to defy gravity, become birds, and reach for the realm of gods, continues. We ache for the stars.

Mythical King Kai Kawus of Persia, was “the Foolish King”, with a “Chariot” carried by four eagles. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds, studied birds, designed human powered wings, and helicopter-like flying machines. Roger Bacon proposed copper spheres filled with aetherial air.

Intertwined with our bird-envy is our genius for war. In China, gunpowder was for war, fireworks and flying rockets. In the middle of Europe's 1848 revolutionary strife, Austria made war with balloons against Florence.

Our other impulse is for enterprise and exploration. In the 1840s a steam-powered air carriage called "The Ariel" was proposed in America - a steampunk airline business - an American vision.

Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903 was the beginning of a new reality. The Great War accelerated our push for the skies. A century of going higher, faster, further, all urged on by war would follow.

Push forward and imagine flight in 2030.

SpaceX spacecraft are now a part of global life. The skies are filled with competition.

The cost of using and reusing spacecraft has dropped from thousands per KG down to $10 per KG and maybe lower. We take defying gravity for granted. We're going to push for more. The Moon is close, Mars will be mainstream and an entire solar system becomes ours to explore.

We've broken free of the prison of Earth's gravity.

We'll push hard to go higher, further and faster, so that we can touch the stars. If we give in to our warlike impulses, will we end up crashing back into the deep dark depths of the oceans? Or will we soar past the skies and our impulses?

We are the children of Daedalus.