It looked like miserable weather in Kitty Hawk–a cold rain, as the president spoke. I doubt if they got off the reenactment of the flight.

Though some were hoping for a major space policy announcement, most of the indications were that it would come later. I suspect that the policy is still being worked out, and they didn’t want to rush it just for an anniversary.

He did get in a nice dig at the Gray Lady, pointing out their editorial after Langley’s disastrous first flight into the Potomac, in which they declared that one to ten million years would be required to develop an airplane. The Wrights flew a few weeks later. It was as dumb an editorial as their one a few years later, in which they said that Goddard was ignorant of physics.

Maybe my last Wright piece will be about risk, and risk aversion.