by Don Piccard
Thank you, distinguished guests, fellow recipients. What a fantastic podium for this kid from Minnesota. What an impressive Collegethis college of the one hundred and ninety nine NAA Elder Statesmen of Aviation from over the years. Some of them my mentors, some my patrons and some just my friends. General Lahm, Fred Crawford, Admiral Rosendahl, Paul Garber, Floyd Sweet, and now look at this year's class.
That I should be included with it is strange - "Elder Statesman of Aviation" - strange indeed, but maybe, explainable. Now, it is mutually exclusive to be a Balloonist and an Elder Anything. Ballooning and balloonists just don't fit with growing up. You GO up, you don't grow up. Then, those of you who know me, know that nobody would ever call me a statesman of anything, me, one who would bring a cat to the Westminster Dog Show. And I am certainly not an Aviator. At least not by the dictionary definition as to do with heavier than air flying machines. So why am I here?
I am not the first balloonist to be here, but with the exception of Charles Rosendahl, who at least was qualified in powered airships, all the others from Frank Lahm forward, have ALSO been aviators. And General Lahm and Admiral Rosendahl, both my patrons and mentors were the only two who were balloonists first. All the others had helicopter and or airplane certificates first with balloon rating as an add on.
I take this honor as an affirmation of my unique gospel of ballooning. A gospel proselytizing carefree, pure fun, horsing around with these interrelationships of time and space and motion. Not the classic balloonist of the Grand Ascension, the Stately Float, and then after some time , finally, the Dramatic Arrival. Tah Dah! My gospel has been in the face of, and in opposition to, those well established and entrenched traditions of ballooning. . Ballooning must be "Populist Aerostatics." Not the private thing of the lucky few. The ones that wouldn't share. You may know who they are.
This Saturday I will be down at the Space Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico for the induction of both of my parents into the International Space Hall of Fame. I would not be here now if it was not for them and their work. I don't think that we would even have this modern sport of hot air ballooning without their work.
And then, tomorrow, Count Zeppelin will be inducted into the automobile hall of fame. This is not a bad week for ballooning.
I thank the selection committee and the board of directors of the NAA for this recognition of my sport of ballooning, may I call it the Prozac of Aero Sports? I thank the BFA, the GAA, Balloon Life and not the least Tom Davies and Lesley Pritchard for their nominations, and Don Overs for his cordial supporting comment. It is a grand affirmation.
*****
While I have this bully pulpit I would like to call again for a program I first proposed when I was a so-called "National Vice President" of the NAA, some thirty years ago. It was for Gold NAA wings which at that time were only available in Sterling Silver. Today you can buy them in gold along with a life membership for a thousand dollars.
My proposal was for gold NAA wings to be awarded to those individuals that fulfilled the basic level of certification in each and every discipline of the NAA. That would be to the solo level of Airplane, Balloon, Helicopter and Glider. Construction and at least U-control flight of a Model. The ballooning requirements could be for soloing a hot air balloon AND at least one gas balloon flight. Maybe just a static line parachute jump. Some basic aerobatics I don't know what the qualifying level in rocketry should be, but you get the idea. I proposed that 30 years ago to try too teach old dogs new tricksto coerce the hierarchy of aviation into familiarity with all facets of sport aeronautics and especially to get some of them into ballooning.
Now, today, the purpose might be more to get all these balloonists out there over the threshold into mainstream sport aviation. That is why I'd like you to consider the proposal again. It wouldn't cost much. There wouldn't be that many that could stay the course. And who other than me would be so crude as to ask someone "Did you buy those wings or earn them?" We could even afford to include the life membership with the gold wings!
*******
I see some young people here today. Yes, Bill Cook, you're one too. Jon Radowski, who is one of Tina Reeves' "Junior Balloonists," has skipped school and come down from New Jersey. That is my special concernto be a pied piper of the air. I do like to ask the kids, whenever I speak at schools and clubs, to predict what they will see and be part of in their next thirty years. With the ever increasing rate of the advance of technology it should be beyond imagination.
In 1903 (No Bill, I wasn't there.) Orville Wright flew down Kill Devil Hill. Just thirty years later Bill Stout actually introduced me to him. By then, in just thirty years we had progressed from that rickety flight at Kitty Hawk to Stout's Ford Tri-motor with onboard toilets. (You know that is the watershed qualification for any transportation vehicle in order to get it into general commercial use.) In just about another thirty years I stood in John Kennedy's rose garden where Bob Gilruth introduced me to John Glenn. Technology does seem to be flowing forward at an ever increasing rate. From Kitty Hawk to the moon in one short life.
What will Jon here be doing thirty years from now? Jon, you have no limits!
Yeas,,, really? So what have we done lately? From Neil Armstrong it has been back down hill from the moon. We now seem to be in a stagnant pool on our voyage to the future. We are letting insurance regulations and minimum wages block the way for kids to get airborne. Why don't we, from the BFA on up, aggressively exploit and promote the opportunities of Bill Cooks favorite - FAR Part 103 - instead of putting up egocentric selfish barricades and obstacles?
Why, just because there is no cold war to goad us, has Congress put NASA on hold? This is not the time to lay in the backwaters. Back home in Minnesota, the Land of Lakes, the Land of Lindbergh, the Land of Oberstar we have a sticky little company called 3M. I have my own 3M's.: MAKE - MARS - MANNED.
You can't imagine how it is to just stand in open space with the stinging nettle touch of thin air on bare skin, looking out at the God's green earth all the way, say, from Buffalo Ridge in the Dakotas on one side to Mississippi River Bluffs in Wisconsin on the other. Standing there with only just the tiny rattle of an oxygen regulator, roughly a mile higher than even the pinnacle of Mount Everest. You can't imagine, but try. I have been there and done that. My dream is to share this, and more. Following the lead of an earlier Elder Statesman, Admiral Byrd, who took "one of those big Eagle Scouts" to Antarctica which inspired me, and Ed Hill who brought a teenager, Floyd Sweet (now an Elder Statesman) out for my mother's stratosphere launch, I will take some young fellow like Jon on an exciting expedition. To inspire our youth to go forward. All the way forward. Yes, to Make Mars Manned. I can't even light an Alan Sheppard Candle. I am not on the Hill. I am not even a Forbes or a Fossett. But I will lead a Jr. Balloonist on an educational expedition to where my Swiss cow Bell will be silent. On a balloon ascension to at least five times as high as Everest where feathers fall like rocks, to where we can stand there (but unfortunately without our skin bare to the vacuum) in my open basket in the black sky and gaze from, say, the Yucatan to Florida. Jon, if you will be the Junior Balloonist on this expedition, could you devise an experiment to measure the acceleration of a bottle rocket at different altitudes on our way up? Maybe we could use some of them to rupture a few of our giant Mylar Pleiades cells to initiate our descent.
This expedition will help inspire our youth to go forward with the flow, out of this stagnant pool, to the future? The first human on Mars is probably now a teenager. If that kid is only inspired by Sosa and McGuire, home runs will be the limit. If we can inspire the astronaut of the future we will have succeeded.
To MAKE - MARS - MANNED.