WisBusiness: Buckley Brinkman: The Kids Are Alright – But Are Their Leaders?

Earlier this month, I spoke to the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC) at Carthage College and coached MBA candidates at UW-Madison. In both cases, it was a delight to be back on campus and to engage with bright students from around the state, along with some of their advisors. The two days left me feeling optimistic about the future, provided our older generations can stay out of the way.

Students dominated the crowd at the WSGC, with a strong contingent of faculty filling out the rest of the audience. Almost everyone participated in some part of space exploration – from rocketry to interplanetary mining. This group pushes the envelope every day, using technology in ways most of us never think about.

My talk focused on the contrast between the Apollo and Artemis moon programs. Sixty years ago, the scientists and engineers who put a man on the moon had a fraction of the computing power available to Artemis today – the modern toaster has more computing power than all of Apollo 11. Yet they went from President Kennedy’s challenge to Neil Armstrong hopping off the ladder in seven years. They leveraged the talent they had against the available technology to accomplish the impossible.

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