by Tom Black, MD
The Experts Have Spoken
We can all agree that in 2016 not
a single person got the answer
correct to the question, “Where
do you see yourself five years
from now?”
“It’s difficult to predict,
especially about the future,”
goes a well-known Danish
proverb, made famous by Nobel
laureate Niels Bohr. That fact
has never stopped people—many
The
of whom ought to have known
better—from prognosticating.
So every January, we hear bold
predictions about the upcoming
year, although 2020 should have
proven how foolhardy that is! So
before placing too much credence
on their words, consider these
predictions that did not withstand
the test of time. The first several
are in honor of SpaceX.
“ To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him
Man will never reach the
into the controlling gravitational field of the moon
where the passengers can make scientific observations,
perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that
constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am
bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will
never occur regardless of all future advances.
-
Dr. Lee de Forest, American radio pioneer, inventor
of the vacuum tube, and father of television, in 1926. “-moon regardless of all
future scientific advances.
Dr. Lee de Forest, doubling down
on his previous prediction, in 1957.