A Giant Leap Backwards

The news of the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation program came and went from the nation’s consciousness last week like ripples on a pond. Yet this represents a larger shift in our cultural fabric than the latest news on Brangelina or who won this year’s Super Bowl.

Once, in our parents’ times, our nation dreamed bold. This country is at its best when it is ambitious; when its dreams slightly exceed its current grasp. Some of those dreams were morally flawed, some were widely reviled, and some were simply unrealistic. But one dream hit the sweet spot of ambition, innocence, and capability: that of manned space travel. Long before “Yes We Can,” we did. Now, the only thing bold in our lives is the coffee we drink. We let our dreams slip away with nary a complaint.

I was raised on a steady diet of promises. Work hard, study hard, and you, too, can be a part of the space program. We would have cheap, regular access to space via the Shuttle; by 1990 we would have a permanent space station in orbit; by the turn of the century a permanent manned moon base was possible, and by 2010 manned space flight to other planets was perfectly realistic. I was one of those kids sitting in front of the television in their pajamas on the morning of April 12, 1981, as the first orbital Space Shuttle flight was launched. I had a full-color atlas of the Earth spread out before me, open to the centerfold global map, and I slowly pushed a paper cut-out of the Shuttle across the map to match the positional data from NASA. I wanted to be part of that. I dreamed big.

Slowly, however, those dreams were drained away. The end of the Cold War revealed the space race for what it was: political grandstanding, a game of one-upmanship. Without the challenge of “beat the Russians” driving us, the nation went about its way perfectly happy to ignore the cosmos. That realm was relegated to a very narrow demographic: the socially inept, overweight, white male watching Star Trek reruns on the Scyfy channel in their parents’ basement.

Now we are obsessed with the mundane. People’s passions run towards questions of who will sing better on American Idol, who will move the ball down the field more adroitly, who will divorce who in Hollywood next, what company will fail and which will buy its competition. We have always had an interest in sports, entertainment, and commerce, of course. But the difference now is this: that is all we aspire to. Decades of postmodern deconstructuralist narrative have taught us to tear down our heroes, re-examine our dreams, reign in our aspirations.

Some would argue that this is a necessary and realistic step. The end of the manned space program represents a national coming to maturity. However, dreams of space travel are no more unrealistic than many of our other dreams. In 2007, it was estimated that we were spending $720 million dollars per day on Bush’s adventure in Iraq(1). Meanwhile, the Center for Science and International Studies estimated the ongoing operational cost for a permanently manned Lunar base would be $7.35 billion per year, or twenty million dollars per day(2) . Taken in that light, a manned Lunar base certainly seems more realistic that the dream of a peaceful, democratic, and USA-loving Iraq. In addition, we would have far fewer families losing their sons and daughters.

The Apollo astronauts are all in their seventies and eighties; the earliest Shuttle astronauts are not much younger. What do we tell them? “Thank you for your bravery, but it was all for naught. We’ve decided what you did wasn’t important enough to follow up on.” Tell that to the families of Gus Grissom, Vladimir Komarov, Francis Scobee, Kalpana Chawla, and the others who have given their lives for space travel(3).
Yes, the Constellation program was questionable. I was a strong critic of a program that would, essentially, revisit 1960’s technology. But it was something, and we have invested five years and many millions of dollars in the program already. Perhaps even more importantly is the dreams that this project represents. To end it without something better to look forward to is unprecedented. The White House claims the goal is to encourage private space travel in preference to government-sponsored travel; but private corporations do not succeed by dreaming big and being bold.

Soon enough, there will be no humans left on the Earth who have walked on another celestial body. In thirty years, we may very well have no one left alive who has ever been to outer space. What will we tell our grandchildren? “Once upon a time, people traveled into space and to the moon. But then we decided it just wasn’t worth the trouble.”




References:
(1) According to the American Friends Service Committee, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102074.html


(2) http://csis.org/publication/costs-international-lunar-base

(3) http://www.vibrationdata.com/space/deaths.htm

April Fools (re: The Dream that might have been)

Google and Virgin got together to play an April Fool's joke on us. Clever, yes. But also pretty darn painful.

The painful part is that it IS all a joke, but it didn't have to be. If we had not effectively abandoned manned space exploration in 1972 with the last Apollo mission, we might very well be preparing a permanent manned Mars base at this moment.

Instead, we frittered it all away on reality TV and Wrestlemania-on- demand.

Having been raised on a steady diet of promises of a glorious future in space exploration, not a single one of which proved to be real, this April Fool's joke is especially poignant and painful for me.

Dreams of Tomorrow, Dreams of the Past

Dreams of Tomorrow, Dreams of the Past

On this All Hallow’s Eve, I would like to share what, for me, has been the spookiest incident of my life. I believe that I had a precognitive dream of 9/11. Now, many people claim they dreamed this the day before, or woke up that morning with a feeling of dread. However, I had this dream a full eighteen years before the event. That’s right… when I was twelve, I had a dream so clear, so detailed, so startling, that I wrote it down, and it stuck with me for decades. However, I did not realize that it was a 9/11 dream until months after the event.

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The dream begins with me starting a new job in a new office. It is the very beginning of my first workday. I am sitting at my desk, setting out a variety of office supplies: blotter, stapler, tape dispenser, putting pens in a pen holder. I am facing a window, and I can look out the window to see a vast cityscape spread out before me. (Note that at this point in my life, age twelve, I had never been in an office or spent much time in a big city).

Suddenly there is something that seems to be an earthquake. The building jumps around, there is a flash, a crash. The office begins filling with smoke; sparks are shooting out of the ceiling and walls. People are running around the office, screaming. I decide it is time to evacuate, and walk to the exit.

The next scene takes place in the lobby. There is shattered glass all around, and people are running and screaming. I am walking through the lobby towards the exit, when I realize that I have left my briefcase at my desk. I am about to turn around and go back for it, when I see a woman standing in the middle of the lobby, staring at me. In the chaos, she is perfectly calm; a middle-aged blonde woman. She is staring at me intently. Hesitating, I walk up to her. She looks at me as if she knows me, but I do not recognize her.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” she says, nodding.

“I was just about to go back to my desk for my briefcase,” I tell her.

“All right,” she says. She sounds sad; a disappointed look comes across her face.

I turn to go, but then a realization strikes me. I turn back to the woman. “If I go back to my desk, I’ll never make it out, will I?”

“That’s right,” she says, nodding.

“Well, all right, then,” I tell her, “in that case, I guess I’ll just leave.”

“All right, then,” she says, smiling now.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yes,” she says, staring at me intently, “I will see you later.”

I walk past her out the doors of the lobby and out onto the street. I continue walking down the street, away from the building. The point-of-view of the dream switches to third-person (something that never happened before or since in my dreams) and I see myself walking away from the building, with the building visible behind me. There are flashes of light and smoke coming out of the building. Then, suddenly, there is one tremendous flash, and the building disappears.

I continue walking. Now I realize that it is still dark; I find it odd that it is still dark at eleven AM. (Only at this point in my dream is time referenced explicitly). Now, suddenly, the sun begins to rise. Within a few minutes it is high in the sky, revealing a painted landscape reminiscent of Arizona or Utah. I look out over a deep valley and think, “Now I can start my new day.”

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For many years, I felt this dream to be largely symbolic. A few months after 9/11, I was going through my old journals and I discovered this; it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was so clearly a 9/11 dream. It was a warning, something to remind me what to do on that day.

However, on the day itself, I was nowhere near New York City. I was 2000 miles away, in California. Perhaps I was destined to be in NYC on that day, but something changed between age 12 and age 30 to put me on a different path. I cannot help but wonder what decision I made that altered my destiny, and whether I was “supposed to” be there.