I grew up in a world that does not exist.
Perhaps it never existed.
Perhaps it was nothing more than a story. A comforting narrative assembled from books, films, teachers, parents, and the countless assumptions we absorb before we are old enough to question them.
Or perhaps it existed only in my own head, a private mythology I mistook for reality.
I genuinely do not know anymore.
The world I believed in was remarkably simple.
It knew nothing of colors.
Nothing of creeds.
Nothing of genders.
Nothing of sexual preferences.
Nothing of ancestry.
Nothing of tribe.
It only knew individuals.
Individuals and their ambitions.
Individuals and their willingness to shoulder responsibility.
Individuals and their determination to do what they believed needed to be done.
In that world, the best rose to the top.
Not because they were born there.
Not because they knew the right people.
Not because they belonged to the correct category on some bureaucrat’s checklist.
They rose because they earned it.
It was a world governed by merit.
Or at least by my understanding of merit.
The strongest minds.
The hardest workers.
The most determined.
The most competent.
The most relentless.
They won.
Not always immediately.
Not without setbacks.
Not without failure.
But eventually.
That was the bargain.
Life was unfair in many ways, but the scoreboard itself was honest.
At least that was the dream.
The strange thing is that I carried that dream with me for a very long time.
Far longer than I should have.
Until I was nearly forty years old, I genuinely believed that merit would ultimately prevail.
That competence mattered.
That results mattered.
That achievement mattered.
I know.
You are welcome to laugh.
In fact, you would be entirely justified in doing so.
Naive does not begin to cover it.
I was spectacularly naive.
Painfully naive.
The sort of naive that should perhaps require a government permit.
I was the poster child for a man living in a dream world.
Reality, naturally, had other plans.
Reality introduced politics.
Reality introduced institutions more concerned with appearances than outcomes.
Reality introduced status games, tribal loyalties, bureaucratic empires, fashionable narratives, and all the other machinery through which human beings ensure that simple things become complicated and complicated things become impossible.
Competence turned out not to be enough.
Sometimes it mattered.
Sometimes it did not.
Sometimes the best person won.
Sometimes the best-connected person won.
Sometimes the loudest person won.
Sometimes the most politically useful person won.
And sometimes nobody won at all.
The prize simply disappeared into a committee.
It took me far too long to notice.
But eventually even the most stubborn dream collides with reality.
Mine certainly did.
And yet, looking back, I am not entirely sure that the fantasy world would have been a better place.
People speak fondly of meritocracy as though it were some flawless paradise.
I am not convinced.
Human beings are messy creatures.
We bring our fears, our biases, our loyalties, our ambitions and our insecurities into everything we build.
Perhaps a perfect meritocracy is as impossible as a perfect democracy.
Or a perfect monarchy.
Or a perfect anything.
Perhaps every system eventually becomes a contest between ideals and human nature.
And human nature remains undefeated.
Still, there is something worth salvaging from the dream.
Because every so often reality imposes conditions so severe that all the games suddenly become irrelevant.
The committees stop mattering.
The slogans stop mattering.
The narratives stop mattering.
The status competitions stop mattering.
Only results remain.
Only competence remains.
Only execution remains.
A bridge either stands or collapses.
A power station either works or it does not.
A rocket either reaches orbit or it explodes.
Reality is refreshingly indifferent to ideology.
Physics does not care who receives the grant.
Orbital mechanics do not care how inclusive the meeting was.
The Moon does not care about anyone’s feelings.
It simply waits.
Which brings us to NASA.
There are moments when civilization has to decide whether it wants to achieve something or merely talk about achieving it.
The Moon is one of those moments.
You can hold conferences about it.
You can create committees about it.
You can produce endless reports about it.
You can organize workshops, outreach programs, awareness campaigns, diversity panels, stakeholder consultations and enough paperwork to bury a small nation.
Or you can build rockets.
At some point, the talking has to stop.
At some point, somebody has to weld steel, test engines, calculate trajectories and launch hardware.
Because the Moon will not be reached through narratives.
The Moon demands competence.
The Moon demands results.
The Moon demands reality.
And reality has never been particularly interested in virtue signaling.
There are footprints waiting to be made.
The rest is noise.