38 years 22 days ago, a 1,588 pound (721.9 kg) blinking gizmo was perched precisely 157 feet (47.8 meters) atop enough Nitrogen Tetroxide, Aerozine, Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen to drown Huell in "Breaking Bad."
Why? To go where no man has gone before.
Back then—August 20, 1977—regular gas was just 62¢ per gallon (remember "regular" gas?) so nobody cared much about miles per gallon.
But all of that fuel—24,900 gallons in just one stage of a Titan IIIe Centaur—was lit on fire to propel the blinking gizmo to where no man or woman has gone before.
The gizmo was the Voyager 2 satellite, which passed Pluto and departed our heliosphere—Elvis has left the building! So, the Voyager 2 satellite has traveled over 11,000,000,000 (that’s eleven billion) miles, and it is still going 39 years later with no more than 16 minutes of fuel at any time. That's 441,767 miles per gallon. (And you thought the Chevy Volt got good mileage.)
"That's wonderful, Wes...I guess. But why are you telling me this? Have you been helping one of your 22 children with their science fair project or something?"
I tell you this to encourage you to continue developing your plans that may still be on the launchpad or just in the design phase. The beginning and the planning and the behind-the-scenes toiling are the hardest part of any new endeavor. (NASA's budget in 1977 was $11,668,000 in 2007 dollars so go easy on yourself if you're still bootstrapping your own launch.)
It takes a big effort for a focused amount of time to build momentum. What you do today and tonight and in the early morning hours tomorrow can carry you through the rest of your life. But you have to plot a course, set a goal, begin the work and stick with it through to launch because until you launch, you don't know how good or bad your idea is. Heck, even with all of that money, NASA had one out of seven launches fail.
If you need some help, let me know.
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