“History will remember the inhabitants of this [the 20th] century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.” — Buzz Aldrin

Wright Flyer. Sopwith Camel. The Spirit of St. Louis. P-38s and B-17s. Glamorous Glennis. Air Force One. Apollo 11. Apollo 13. Skylab. Concorde. Columbia. Challenger. Mir. Pan Am 103. United 232. TWA 800. The International Space Station. American 11 and 77, United 93 and 175. Columbia, again.

In 100 years of aviation history, these are some of the names that rise above the others, for better or worse, symbolizing the promise and the peril inherent from the day man tried to fly — and finally did.

Since Dec. 17, 1903 — the day Orville Wright flew 120 feet in 12 seconds — airplanes and, by extension, rockets and space-related items, have, like every other technological innovation, been helping and hurting the human experience. They offered fast transport of mail, and then passengers, across the country and around the world.

They became a part of war so important, new structures and a new military branch were created. They guided Soviets and Americans into space and have enabled 17 men to walk on the moon.

And they have been used as giant missiles, driven into buildings.

One hundred years later, you might think we’ve gotten the hang of it, so to speak. New frontiers beckoned, new possibilities now probable. But really, of those 100 years, only 75, 80 at the most, encompass all the leaps and bounds of flight.

Since the late 1970s — after Concorde came into service and the Space Shuttle Enterprise was tested — nothing big has happened. A possible exception is the International Space Station, but even then, Skylab was around back then.

If anything, in the overall scheme of things, we have actually regressed. The Concorde, providing civilians (albeit civilians with large sums of money) the chance to travel faster than sound and arrive at a time before you left when going from London to New York, went out of commission this year. The Columbia, a shuttle that should have been destined for a museum, disintegrated over the Southwest United States, and the exact date of resuming flights is unknown. Instead of the United States and Soviet Union falling over themselves to push the limits, it is China that announces grandiose plans, such as the one Saturday that promised an unmanned lunar landing in the next six years and a manned one by 2020.

That doesn’t mean the situation is doomed to remain stagnant, though. Low-cost airlines and Internet sites are changing the way we fly. Columbia showed the need for a replacement spacecraft. Maybe, eventually, planes such as the Concorde will fly again at more reasonable costs.

Something has been lost, in both the travel from Earth Point A to Earth Point B and the travel from Earth to Wherever. There are still those alive today who hopped on boats or trains when they were the fastest things around, who were born when Kitty Hawk was an obscure beach in North Carolina. There are many more who grew up when the mere existence of someone outside the atmosphere was a construction of science fiction.

But dreams have habits of falling to earth, sometimes literally, and they temper our ambitions. Airplanes are generally safe, but crashes make the news, and now there is the fear that not only could your plane be hijacked, but it could also be used as a weapon. The act of going into space itself came under fire after Columbia, and NASA’s budget takes a back seat to earthly matters of war and economy.

Unfortunately, crashes are inescapable and can happen anywhere. In 1998, there was a tragedy in Traer when a pilot attending a fly-in breakfast crashed his small plane on the grass airstrip. The 1989 crash of United 232 in Sioux City brought forth tragedy but also a tale of heroism as the pilots struggled to bring the plane in as safely as possible, saving dozens of passengers. Sept. 11 showed a need for more airport security and also how using passenger planes for terrorist acts can be much, much worse than Pan Am 103’s explosion over Scotland in 1988.

Later this month, as the Wright brothers’ centennial is celebrated, is a good time to recommit to fulfilling the promises the Space Age used to hold. It’s unfortunate that the term itself is more symbolic of the past than of the future. Just because so many frontiers have been explored does not mean they should be abandoned.