Jericho: Definitely not Star Wars
*Sigh*
I totally bought the hype when I was a kid. I was told there would be colonies on the Moon and Mars. I was told we were going to have a big space station (not a space double-wide.) I was told that we would have shuttles run to and from space all the time. I watched Star Trek. I watched Star Wars. The Shuttle finally took off. I got more and more into sci-fi. Lots of Shuttles went up. There was talk of a space station. I wanted to graduate high school, go into the Navy and then into NASA. It looked like the world was turning my way.
Then, Challenger was lost. NASA had it's budget cut. I grew over six feet tall (six feet is the cut off for Navy pilots.) NASA had it's budget cut. They flew the Shuttle, again, finally. NASA had it's budget cut. The Gulf War came along. They delayed the International Space Station. NASA had it's budget cut. They cut the budget for the ISS. NASA had it's budget cut. The Hubble had vision problems and we lost a couple of Mars missions - all probably due to budget cuts. We lost Columbia.
My hopes for an adulthood out of a sci-fi novel were dashed a while back. But, I kept hoping it would get better. I kept hoping to maybe retire to Mars or something like that. I have hoped to take my mom into space as a birthday present somewhere along the line - she's a sci-fi fan, too. But, no, none of that looks to be happening.
I'm sure most of you have seen the hub-bub about the Shuttle getting back into space and the "repair" mission they undertook, etc. Thousands of engineers all working to put up a handful of astronauts in a single vehicle. Amazing, but not exactly the vision we had in mind.
In sci-fi, space travel is never easy, but it's at the very least common. Sure, the Enterprise had Scotty running around repairing stuff al the time. But, it was a big ship that often saw combat. The Millennium Falcon was constantly getting repaired, but, it's a race car and it, too, often saw combat. Luke's X-Wing fighter had fewer repairs! In all cases, these vehicles allowed brave people to venture from the surface of their planet and go see what else was out there. The vehicles allowed them to do it every day. The vehicles gave them freedom.
We won't see that freedom in our life time. It pains me very much to write that, but it's true I'm afraid. We could be so much further.
Dear Sir. Richard Branson and Mr. Paul Allen, if you are reading this, please save the human race from it's own lack of fore sight. Amen.
I totally bought the hype when I was a kid. I was told there would be colonies on the Moon and Mars. I was told we were going to have a big space station (not a space double-wide.) I was told that we would have shuttles run to and from space all the time. I watched Star Trek. I watched Star Wars. The Shuttle finally took off. I got more and more into sci-fi. Lots of Shuttles went up. There was talk of a space station. I wanted to graduate high school, go into the Navy and then into NASA. It looked like the world was turning my way.
Then, Challenger was lost. NASA had it's budget cut. I grew over six feet tall (six feet is the cut off for Navy pilots.) NASA had it's budget cut. They flew the Shuttle, again, finally. NASA had it's budget cut. The Gulf War came along. They delayed the International Space Station. NASA had it's budget cut. They cut the budget for the ISS. NASA had it's budget cut. The Hubble had vision problems and we lost a couple of Mars missions - all probably due to budget cuts. We lost Columbia.
My hopes for an adulthood out of a sci-fi novel were dashed a while back. But, I kept hoping it would get better. I kept hoping to maybe retire to Mars or something like that. I have hoped to take my mom into space as a birthday present somewhere along the line - she's a sci-fi fan, too. But, no, none of that looks to be happening.
I'm sure most of you have seen the hub-bub about the Shuttle getting back into space and the "repair" mission they undertook, etc. Thousands of engineers all working to put up a handful of astronauts in a single vehicle. Amazing, but not exactly the vision we had in mind.
In sci-fi, space travel is never easy, but it's at the very least common. Sure, the Enterprise had Scotty running around repairing stuff al the time. But, it was a big ship that often saw combat. The Millennium Falcon was constantly getting repaired, but, it's a race car and it, too, often saw combat. Luke's X-Wing fighter had fewer repairs! In all cases, these vehicles allowed brave people to venture from the surface of their planet and go see what else was out there. The vehicles allowed them to do it every day. The vehicles gave them freedom.
We won't see that freedom in our life time. It pains me very much to write that, but it's true I'm afraid. We could be so much further.
Dear Sir. Richard Branson and Mr. Paul Allen, if you are reading this, please save the human race from it's own lack of fore sight. Amen.
posted by Jericho Brown at 8/03/2005 04:07:00 PM
15 Comments:
I'm pretty sure that request has been made countless times over the past 5000 years as a prayer.
You have a strange concept of history - I don't think either of them are that old!
Bastard. I was going to post something along the same lines. That said, I think it is clear that government is not going get us into space. If government had monopolized air flight we'd still be flying biplanes and zeppelins. And they would still be grounded amidst post-Hindenburg investigations. Either the Richard Bransons of the world will get us into space or we are stuck here.
The thing that sticks in my craw is that there is nothing I can do about it. I can't raise the kind of money to make private space travel possible. I can't vote NASA more cash or vote it out of existance and vote the little bit of money for NASA to a private organisation. I can't buy products that support private space travel. Okay, I'm buying the new Splenda sweetened Diet 7UP for the Splenda and for a chance to win a trip into space, but I don't think this will do what I want it to do. There's just no way for me to help.
Run for Congress. Sell your house and use the proceeds to put a deposit down on a ticket on Virgin Galactic.
Or, like me, chill and wait for Southwest to get into the space tourism field.
Yeah, cause those 93,000 people with the Pam Am tickets to the Moon are packing their bags right now!
This is what I'm talking about. Sorry for not explaining myself.
Wait... what does Paul Allen have to do with anything space related? He's the founder of Charter and created the Music Experience in Seattle.
Or is this a different Paul Allen?
Right next door to the EMP is the Sci-Fi Museum; home of most of Paul Allen's personal collection of sci-fi related stuff. Cine-Rama is a movie theatre here in Downtown Seattle, owned by Vulcan (Paul Allen's company) First movie shown? Star Wars Episode 1. Paul Allen is the major contributor on a new SETI project looking for high intensity photon emissions (laser based communication).
Paul Allen is a geek. More importantly, he's a geek with money!
In this instance, Paul Allen was one of the major fund providers for Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne, you may have heard about this in the news. If not, have a look here:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/062104.htm
Richard Branson of Virgin Records/Cola/Airlines/Etc. is investing in the SpaceShipOne concept now that it has proven to be successful. He wants to have the first regularly running spaceliner. He just may get it, too.
I'm not saying that Virgin Galactic is a certain success. It may well fail. But at least someone is trying.
I couldn't agree more. At least someone is trying. At most more people could try with some help from the various governments of the world.
This shit is important. Everytime mankind puts money, time and effort into research toward some goal, usually warfare, other goals get met. An answer to building a better jet bomber makes for a safer jet liner. Because some astronaut had trouble in his spacesuit, women's bras work better (look up the history of lycra and you'll see what I'm talking about.)
The point is that man was meant to leave. We were meant to leave the trees. We were meant to leave the caves. We were meant to leave the old countries behind. We are meant to leave behind this planet, our womb. Someday, we will be meant to leave this solar system and maybe even this galaxy. Everytime we have expanded, we have improved our lot in life. Why should we slow down now?
"Because if God wanted us to be in space he would have put us there in the first place."
So says a girl in my training class.
Feh. God made us curious which makes us explorers, too.
More could be. Even if all the governments got together and put trillion into it, more could be done. It is just that we gave the governement over 4 decades and we are still stuck with a lucky few driving a low orbit panel truck to some tubes in space. I think what we need more than government dollars is some people like Richard Branson who believe that adventure is worth the effort, especially when there is a profit to be made.
Totally with you on that. The governments of the world have proven one thing clearly - they suck at space exploration. The only reason why there was a Space Race in the Sixties and Seventies was because it was cheaper and less deadly than fighting a nuclear war with the Russians. It was a dick measuring contest. Once people zipped up their flies, or took their dicks elsewhere, like, say, Viet Nam, the Space Race was over.
But, then again, this agrees with history. Governments have never been good at exploring. Governments are risk adverse. It comes down to individuals and corporations to go explore. Columbus had a dream, no government came up with his plan. He yelled about it long enough until people listened and backed him.
Space exploration has been plagued with this from the start. Rockets have existed for, what, a thousand years? Robert Goddard figured out how to make them into tools. The Nazi's made them into weapons and the Americans and the Russians made them tools of political and social influence. Without Goddard, the rest would never have happened. They laughed at him as loudly as they laughed at Columbus. No one is laughing now.
People are laughing at Paul Allen and Richard Branson - but not too loudly!
Hey, Laura. I totally agree with you.
Tell the doof in your training class that we are in space - all of us. Our little speck of sand planet revolves around the Sun just like every other planet in our system. We now have proof that there are other planets out there orbiting other stars. I wonder how many Edens God created?
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