Space Dreams
Welcome to this weeks’ new followers and subscribers. Thank you for choosing to read All Kinds of Everything. Last week’s theme of taking time out seemed to resonate with a lot of people, which I suspect illustrates how stressed we are about the state of the world, as well as how busy our lives are. This week taking time out takes on a whole new dimension.
When I was a kid, the moon landing was a big deal. Everybody I knew wanted to go in a rocket ship to the stars! We take it for granted now that we can go into space and come back, but in the 60’s it was a new and exciting concept, not an everyday occurrence. I was fascinated by the moon, especially. I genuinely believed there was a ‘man in the moon’ when I was 5, but aged 6, that all changed when America’s Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even then, I wondered why there were only men in space suits, bobbing about in moon dust. ‘Can’t women go to the moon?’ I asked my Mum and was told not to be ‘daft’. Still, I harboured a desire to go into space. I didn’t have the brains, encouragement or determination to work in aerospace, but space has always fascinated me, the what’s up there and out there, the other-ness of it. If I’d been offered a seat on the Challenger space shuttle that crashed, tragically killing all seven crew members, I would have taken it. The risks always seemed worth the promise of space flight.
These days, the risks outweigh any potential benefits, which are largely selfish. Eleven minutes in space takes huge resources and the company that sends millionaires to the skies is making a great job of destroying the only home we have. They may have dreams of colonising other planets, but those dreams will die in the dust of the earth before they’re realised. They’re not focusing on solutions, simply avoiding reality and making our problems worse. If all that money was focused on addressing the very real and present threat of climate catastrophe, think what it could achieve. I don’t know what the figures are for a seat on a space flight, but deposits alone for a Blue Origin are $150,000 per person. I don’t deny the genius and determination that has gone into developing rockets that can land back on earth, but wouldn’t it be better to use that wealth and genius for something more important than a 62 mile high pleasure trip?
As always I welcome your comments and any discussion on the topics I write about. All my articles are opinion pieces, although I do try and research when facts are needed.
I took remember the moon landings and had charts on my bedroom walls to follow progress. Wind forward 60 years and I am more entranced by the moon as part of me, us and Earth; and what it tells us about ourselves and our connections; and not some pointless billionaire orgasm. 😖
I remember the moon landing vividly. My feelings about it at five were very different from yours! I was allowed to stay up and watch the footage and I was expecting it to be like Star Trek, so my first reaction was to think it very dull and slow and hard to see! The following morning on the way to school, I looked up at the moon in the sky and asked Mum why I couldn't see the men walking about on it (albeit as dots). The boys in particular at school were obsessed with making rockets from yoghurt cartons, yoghurt being a comparatively new product to us (we didn't have it for years). I was brought up from a very early age with perhaps too much awareness of world affairs (as in, they caused anxiety but I didn't always know the context or how it actually related to me), and from what I recall, the moon landing coincided with famines (looking it up now, possibly Biafra and Rajasthan but then I just knew somewhere people didn't have enough food), and I wondered even then if the money wouldn't be better spent on earth. Why were we so obsessed with another conquest? (I doubt I could have expressed that obviously, but I definitely thought it seemed wrong to spend money on something we didn't need while people were starving.) As a teenager I started a novel about those left behind after the majority of people 'flew' to other planets because they'd pretty much destroyed this one (given my generation - my fear was more nuclear war than ecological disaster). It never got further than a concept and a paragraph or two, but I think I was still thinking 'shouldn't we sort out what we have rather than treat it as disposable and move on to the next thing?' I have never really had the urge to go to space. I'm marginally claustrophobic and at the same time, daunted by massive open spaces of nothing and no one (the sea, artic wastelands, deserts). The thought of being trapped inside a vessel so far from other people - apart from those with me - and (frankly) places to hide really really unnerves me and the thought of suffocating from lack of oxygen... too much like drowning which also frightens me. (I was exposed to a lot of 60s and 70s science fiction films very young too, which probably doesn't help. Reading this through, am hoping there are no psychiatrists reading it! Bottom line is: I like looking at space but have no urge to visit!