Getting To Tomorrow, by Mike Gold Brainiac On Banjo #265 | @MDWorld
Over at ComicMix yesterday, my blood-buddy and secret lover John Ostrander wrote about Star Trek – to be specific, how the sense of wonder generated by that show inspired Americans. I was planning on covering somewhat similar turf, and, in this venue, I remain undeterred.
Both of us were motivated by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s appearances last week on The Daily Show and Real Time. He’s been flacking his new book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier; I do not know if he realizes the heavy burden that rests on his shoulders. He is a one-man inspiration factory.
I’ve been wrestling with the issue of the program’s cost/benefit analysis for years. Yes, space exploration is important and it obviously has given us a great many technological advances – but can we afford it? With all the problems in our nation – environment, over-population, social inequity, health care, growing religious and tribal intolerance, a political structure that is so far beyond functional that it is actually a great evil (hiya, Olympia Snow!), how can we re-kickstart the massively cash intensive space program?
About the beginning of the year, the answer finally dawned on me and I’ve been reality testing it for two months. The space program of the 1960s was inspired by people who grew up reading Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, Leigh Brackett, Clifford D. Simak, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, Judith Merril and so many others. In turn, their efforts inspired the great inventions of the 1980s: MS-DOS, the Apple Macintosh, the human growth hormone, virtual reality (at least as a concept), compact discs, Doppler radar, cloning, and HDTV, to name but a few.
Oh, and Prozac.
What inspired these inventors? If you look back at the various interviews published at the time, you’ll find the keystone inspiration was the space program. Our quest into “outer space,” our landing on the moon, the Space Shuttle missions, and even – and perhaps specifically – the “failed” Apollo 1 and 13 missions. I was 10 years old when Alan Shepard rode Freedom 7. As a long-time comic book and science fiction reader (yeah, I was as precocious as I was obnoxious), watching this event and the subsequent launches live on teevee with my schoolmates fed my already overactive sense of wonder. How many young inventors were similarly inspired?
On Real Time last Friday, Bill Maher asked Tyson to list some of the day-to-day benefits granted to us by the space program of yore. He responded like the scientist he is: in order to get stuff into outer space, we had to figure out how to miniaturize everything. It costs $10,000 a pound to send something up there (“up” being relative). We had to invent the stuff that quickly led to the development of computers – particularly home computers – and to the creation of our current medical technology, hybrid engines, communications, water filtration, and so much more. It’s extended our lives and raised our quality of life. It has brought contemporary advances to places that, at the time Alan Shepard put on the big helmet, still lived in the Dark Ages.
So the issue for me has turned from “how can we afford it” to “how can we not?”
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Buck Rogers’ Red Cat brother Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times) and available On Demand at the same place.
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March 5th, 2012 at 11:21 am
So the issue for me has turned from “how can we afford it” to “how can we not?”
So true. Yet when Newt Gingrich suggested a moon colony he was roundly ridiculed. Even the even-handed Jon Stewart piled on. And no one on Real Time brought up Gingrich’s plan either. So strange.
March 5th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Newt wanted to colonize the moon while he insisted on slashing every other useful part of the budget. I don’t think that’s what Tyson was suggesting.
Newt wanted to colonize the moon for the sole benefit of the United States. I don’t think that’s what Tyson was suggesting.
Mittens, at the time, said, “If I was CEO of a company and someone suggested spending $110 billion (or whatever amount he said) on going to the moon, I’d fire that person.” And that’s exactly why we need a federal government. A corporation is there to make a profit. The government is not. And that difference in perspective is why I’m not a modern-day Republican.
March 5th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
I’ve been a space buff since the 1960s, and a long, long time ago I realized that every passing year the human race does not expand our presence elsewhere in the universe, we are risking total oblivion.
We know now that, sooner or later, a civilization-killing asteroid or comet will impact Earth, and everything humanity has learned about our universe and done to improve our standard of living during the past few thousand years will come to a screeching halt. Some may survive, but if the impact is big enough, or if the wrong spot is hit, or if the impact has a ripple effect (i.e., it triggers a supervolcano eruption, for example), or if we sustain another significant hit not too long afterwards, we will all be gone within the span of two or three years.
If we have some sort of presence elsewhere in our solar system, or multiple elsewheres, we greatly improve the chances of our species surviving — unless a super nova explodes nearby, or unless a black hole passes nearby and gobbles up our solar system.
In any case, when all is said and done, nothing else besides our survival as a species really matters, does it? Politic turf doesn’t matter; Global Warming doesn’t matter; how much money one has or does not have doesn’t matter; one’s nationality or race doesn’t matter — none of that will be important when (not if) this planet get smacked.
So is space exploration worth it? Hell yes.
Now that we’ve progressed to the point where we understand the threats facing this planet, branching out is the only insurance policy we’ve got. If we opt out of that insurance and throw all of our resources at making us more comfortable before the inevitable, we deserve extinction. But remember, if we all die off, so will all of the other cute and cuddly mammals, and the cockroaches will inherit the Earth.
March 5th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Russ, I thought Newt’s plan was mentioned on Real Time this week, briefly and not in a particularly supportive way.
It’s been a long time since we could take Newt the least bit seriously. Had he phrased this as an adaptation of JFK’s inspirational and successful “land a man on the moon by the end of the century” program, it might have clicked… but it would have pissed off his base big time. BTW, to my mind, that was JFK’s best moment by far.
He could have sold it as a jobs creation plan, but that would have brought up the concerns Martha voiced. Like I said, Newt pathetically squandered his ability to be taken seriously.
The cockroaches, as it turns out, are unlikely to survive nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, Keith Richards will likely be around.
March 5th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
It’s nice that Newt mentioned his plan, but I think he’s too devisive a guy to be the Space Champion and get a consensus.
That said, if I were such a non-devisive Space Champion and I needed a conservative to champion the cause amongst conservatives, Newt would be one of the first people I’d go to.
March 5th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
I think the cockroaches would survive just fine — even after a nuclear holocaust — simply because the effects of fallout would not be global, and thus would never penetrate all of the countless dank, dark places cockroaches currently live. But even if, for some unlikely reason, cockroaches succumbed, tardigrades (water bears), who can survive truly unbelievable temperature and radiation extremes, would live on.
Frankly, space colonization-wise, I think the human race is screwed. Humans are reactive, rather than proactive, by nature, so we tend not to do anything as a whole until something terrible happens. In the case of the threat from space, no one is going to do anything major until it has been confirmed that we are already in the crosshairs — and as any cosmologist will tell you, by then it will probably already be too late.
And frankly, we may not have any warning at all. In the past five years or so I think I’ve read about a half-dozen or so near misses by asteroids that scientists only knew about shortly before or AFTER the fact.
March 5th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Two things I loved about the space program back in the 60′s…
Alan Shepard snuck some golf balls and clubs onto the capsule, and played golf on the moon. The club is now in the Smithsonian.
I’m not sure which Apollo mission it was, but they played Sinatra’s FLY ME TO THE MOON and shot it back to Earth.
BTW, one of the greatest movies EVER is THE RIGHT STUFF. It was just on Turner Classic last Friday.
As far as Newt’s b.s. about going to the moon–while I appreciate the sentiment, anything that comes out of his mouth makes me want to puke. But I do think he’s into science fiction/fantasy, he was actually a “pundit” on a History Channel documentary about STAR WARS.
March 5th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Saw Tyson on REAL TIME and the DAILY SHOW. The man rocks!
March 5th, 2012 at 6:02 pm
when Newt Gingrich suggested a moon colony he was roundly ridiculed.
Gingrich has repeatedly demonstrated that one should roundly ridicule anything that he says.
March 5th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Sean, that’s an interesting and appropriate take on “benefit of the doubt.” But the moon colony bit doesn’t even rank in his top 10 remarkably ridiculous things he’s said.
Chances are, by Wednesday morning he’ll be vapor.
March 6th, 2012 at 9:59 am
Newt wants a space program primarily funded (and consequently controlled) by private enterprise. This may happen if there turns out to be a profit in it, but I don’t need Newt in the White House to make that happen.
I’d love the world to have a meaningful space program, but I don’t see that happening as long as we have to spend so much time and effort making sure we are able to kill each other several time over and make the world an uninhabitable wasteland without having to wait for a random asteroid.
March 6th, 2012 at 10:27 am
I get the feeling Rick won’t be enlisting to fight in Iran.
Republicrats keep on shouting the politically-popular mantra “Why isn’t the president doing something about oil prices?” Well, what do you think this “We’ll attack Iran when and if we have to, but we don’t have to today” stuff is all about? Next to the asshole speculators, the war scare out in Oilland is the single greatest event spiking prices. Note that the day after Obama’s speech, crude oil dropped 2%.
But, no, let’s elect us another Republischmuck so we can continue to give the oil companies more money.
March 6th, 2012 at 11:09 am
LOVED it in the interview when Neil deGrasse Tyson put the cost in perspective by saying all that could be done with spending one extra penny from the government’s symbolic dollar.
And there is a practical need for a space program. Ask the dinosaurs. Oh wait…you can’t.
March 6th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
The dinosaurs had a space program? So THAT’S where they went?
Cool!
March 6th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Yes, Mike. And then they came back disguised as humans. They made a teevee series about it. Or David Icke wrote a book about it.
March 6th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Rick, are you talking about the former Secretary of the Interior? No wonder he got the job… if he knows where the dinosaurs are. Or are you talking about his kid, a lobbyist who worked for McCarthy, Bayh, Clinton, Udall, Dinkins, Ted Kennedy, and Jesse Jackson?
March 6th, 2012 at 2:00 pm
I’ve said it for years – the return on investment in the space program is staggering. If people could grasp how much of their modern-day life is using technology we created for space, they might concievably grasp its benefit.
Maybe a short film follwing a person through their day, and just arrows pointing to things – cellphone, computer, fivers in their clothes, etc.
It’s more than Tang and Velcro, people.
March 6th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Mike: The David Icke who wrote a book about how the world is controlled by lizard people.
http://www.davidicke.com/
March 6th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
War is also really great for coming up with new technology, but I don’t recommend it.
March 6th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Vinnie, do they still make Tang? Kinda weird that it would outlive the space program.
Rick, I get all my new war technology from reading really old Blackhawk comic books. Still waiting for the War Wheel.
In all seriousness (which, curiously, invokes the spirit of Steve Allen), the godmother of computer software was Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, super-programmer and co-inventor of COBOL. Her awards and honors outnumber the amoeba population… but I honor her for her statement “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
And she never worked for Warner Bros. I think.
March 6th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
See? The average mindset about the asteroid threat is, “Oh well, I can’t do anything about it so why worry about it?”
But the fact is, you can. We ALL can. But there’s just no motivation among the masses because (a.) the threat is not imminent (as far as we know); and (b.) we consciously or subconsciously know that even if we, the people, do make a concerted effort to branch out, when Earth gets smacked, we’ll most likely still be here and will die anyway — so why bother?
Why? Simple…. so everything you, me and the the gal down the block, and the billions who came before us, did not elevate mankind out of caves for nothing.
March 7th, 2012 at 10:49 am
Golden Boy -
RE: a dinosaur space program…
My insinuation was too broad. Rumor had it that dinos got wiped out by an asteroid. If true, then we could also be faced with the same threat. Therefore, a space program that could develop protective technologies could be of life-and-death importance.
Just ask Bruce Willis.
Shoot! I did it again…He starred in “Armageddon”.
March 7th, 2012 at 11:39 am
Whitney, I prefer to think the dinosaurs donned their space helmets and did the whole escaping Krypton thing. This scenario give me… hope.
March 7th, 2012 at 10:01 pm
I read an SF book (the title and author of which I forget) based on the premise of a Star Trekish doomsday device that goes around devouring any planet with advanced life forms. Each planet has hundreds of years advance warning that it’s next in line, but no one ever does anything about it until it’s too late because they all figure “Hey, we’ve got hundreds of years! Why worry about it now?”
March 7th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Yeah. That used to bother me.