Eyes Turned Skyward
I left fandom for a couple months (because of my AMAZING SUMMER JOB OMG) so of course I missed Space Girl by 
charmax until now. It is, of course, an amazing vid. It's basically the entire history of televised science fiction as seen through the lens of female characters, with all the kitch and tropes and awesomeness and awe that suggests. Amazing.
Speaking of which.
On Friday, this happened for the last time.
Twelve men have walked on the moon. Twelve, and only twelve, all American. The first was on July 21, 1969. The last left three and a half years later, on December 14, 1972. Your parents were probably alive. Your parents probably watched. The footprints they left are still there in the dust. The objects they left can be seen with a telescope.
I love science fiction for many reasons. I think it shows humanity at its best, or perhaps I should say its purest-- it shows us our hopes and our dreams and our goals and our striving. It shows what we think of ourselves and what we want for our future. Right now it's a sad, stifled, belittled genre, more worried about being "edgy" and "adult" and "dark" than about trying to define the next dream.
But without Verne and Wells, man would never have stepped on the moon. Without Asimov and Clarke and Sagan, there would have been no Space Shuttle. If a human ever reaches Mars, it will be because science fiction as a genre, as a community, remembers the dream and reminds us all. Five Space Shuttles (Atlantis, docking with the ISS today, Discovery and Endeavor, retired, and Columbia and Challenger, RIP) between them flew 134 missions, and for that miracle humanity owes every SF geek and every cheesy space opera and every Star Trek episode and every issue of Analog more than we will ever be able to repay.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- Neil Armstrong
If somebody'd said before the flight, "Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?" I would have say, "No, no way." But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.
- Alan Shepard
As is so often said, the important thing about going to the moon was being able to look back at Earth. They say that the most intense, awe-inspiring, life-changing experience anyone can ever have is seeing Earth from space. I believe it.
I defy anyone to read Pale Blue Dot and not cry.
Technology is always credited with making our world smaller. Astronomy, and later space flight, have done that more than any other discipline, but not by making it easier to communicate or travel. It hasn't brought distant cities or continents closer, it hasn't shorted the amount of time news takes to reach us or made it easier to keep in touch with far-flung friends. The study of the stars did not shrink the world, it expanded the universe. It changed nothing about us but our perspective.
We are so very, very small, and Out There is so unimaginably huge, that we will never, not in a million lifetimes of learning, be able to begin to comprehend it all. We can never run out of space. We can never run out of questions.
And that is glorious.
A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.
- Konstantin E. Tsiokovsky, Russian astronautics pioneer
Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
- Vincent van Gogh
Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.
- Isaac Asimov
One day, we will colonize other planets. We can't not. This isn't a wish and it isn't a prediction, it's an obligation.
If there is other life in the universe, we OWE it to them to find them and communicate with them, to learn from them and to reshape our ideas about life around what we find and to make sure they know that they aren't alone either.
If we are the only ones, then we owe it to the universe to spread and multiply and fight entropy and bring life to every corner that will support it.
If we don't do this, we have failed as a species. It's that simple.
We will colonize or we will go extinct. Again, not a prediction, but an inevitability. This planet is so small, so fragile (so terrifyingly, incomprehensibly, small against the backdrop of the galaxy) that it is criminally negligent that we aren't trying to leave it now that we know how.
We must and we will but right now we seem to have forgotten that fact, and I admit that it terrifies me that we might not remember until I am dead and won't be able to see it.
Right now, six men live in space. They have been there since May and will be there for a few months longer. Their names are Satoshi Furukawa, Mike Fossum, Ron Garan, Alexander Samokutyaev, Sergei Volkov, and Andrey Borisenko. They pass over your heads every 91 minutes. Humans have lived in space since before I was born (though not always continuously).
When you point out to the average person on the street that humans are living in space right now, many of them will not believe you. Most of the rest will scrunch their foreheads and say "oh yeah... I think I knew that," or some equivalent.
That this is not a headline every day, that every person who goes on an ISS mission is not a hero when they come home, that people do not stare up in wonder and awe every moment because humans live in space is unfathomable to me.
In the last 20 years, the greatest and most astounding advances of science have been in computing. Most people alive today are keenly aware all the time of the leaps and bounds, of the almost miraculous power they carry with them all the time. That is good. It's better than good. I am every bit the predictable evangelical about the internet. I know all the good information technology has done for every industry and every corner of our economy. I know all about the revolutions being worked by changing communications. I know that this has probably done more good for actual human happiness than a millions space missions could ever do, in much the same way that advances in medicine have done more for human quality of life than a million moon walks. I won't denigrate those things for a moment.
But somewhere along the line, our excitement about the future ended up focused on the iPhone in our hand instead of the launch at Cape Canaveral.
Last generation, our collective fears and insecurities led us to... well, to a nuclear arsenal that could have extinguished us. But our fears also led us to space. They led us to strive, to be greater, to reach out rather than retrench.
Our insecurity right now has just led us to put metal detectors on every building and pat down air travelers. Our fear of being eclipsed has led to bickering over currency values and dire warnings about manufacturing and helplessness about infrastructure and education and investment. We can't even manage a bullet train. Regular old health insurance nearly broke the political system. All our debate right now is about how to do less -- not how to do more with less, but just how to do less. The most audacious dreams you'll hear voiced in Op-Eds center on maybe possibly changing immigration laws. We wrangle nonstop about the cost of everything without ever talking about its value.
It just makes me sad, a little bit, that our dreams have gotten so very small.
Everyone -- EVEYONE -- who feels even the smallest fraction of what I do about this needs to go watch To Touch the Face of God by destina, and good luck to the Atlantis crew for their safe return home.
This entry was originally posted at http://dragojustine.dreamwidth.org/132039.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
charmax until now. It is, of course, an amazing vid. It's basically the entire history of televised science fiction as seen through the lens of female characters, with all the kitch and tropes and awesomeness and awe that suggests. Amazing.
Speaking of which.
On Friday, this happened for the last time.
Twelve men have walked on the moon. Twelve, and only twelve, all American. The first was on July 21, 1969. The last left three and a half years later, on December 14, 1972. Your parents were probably alive. Your parents probably watched. The footprints they left are still there in the dust. The objects they left can be seen with a telescope.
I love science fiction for many reasons. I think it shows humanity at its best, or perhaps I should say its purest-- it shows us our hopes and our dreams and our goals and our striving. It shows what we think of ourselves and what we want for our future. Right now it's a sad, stifled, belittled genre, more worried about being "edgy" and "adult" and "dark" than about trying to define the next dream.
But without Verne and Wells, man would never have stepped on the moon. Without Asimov and Clarke and Sagan, there would have been no Space Shuttle. If a human ever reaches Mars, it will be because science fiction as a genre, as a community, remembers the dream and reminds us all. Five Space Shuttles (Atlantis, docking with the ISS today, Discovery and Endeavor, retired, and Columbia and Challenger, RIP) between them flew 134 missions, and for that miracle humanity owes every SF geek and every cheesy space opera and every Star Trek episode and every issue of Analog more than we will ever be able to repay.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- Neil Armstrong
If somebody'd said before the flight, "Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?" I would have say, "No, no way." But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.
- Alan Shepard
As is so often said, the important thing about going to the moon was being able to look back at Earth. They say that the most intense, awe-inspiring, life-changing experience anyone can ever have is seeing Earth from space. I believe it.
I defy anyone to read Pale Blue Dot and not cry.
Technology is always credited with making our world smaller. Astronomy, and later space flight, have done that more than any other discipline, but not by making it easier to communicate or travel. It hasn't brought distant cities or continents closer, it hasn't shorted the amount of time news takes to reach us or made it easier to keep in touch with far-flung friends. The study of the stars did not shrink the world, it expanded the universe. It changed nothing about us but our perspective.
We are so very, very small, and Out There is so unimaginably huge, that we will never, not in a million lifetimes of learning, be able to begin to comprehend it all. We can never run out of space. We can never run out of questions.
And that is glorious.
A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.
- Konstantin E. Tsiokovsky, Russian astronautics pioneer
Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
- Vincent van Gogh
Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.
- Isaac Asimov
One day, we will colonize other planets. We can't not. This isn't a wish and it isn't a prediction, it's an obligation.
If there is other life in the universe, we OWE it to them to find them and communicate with them, to learn from them and to reshape our ideas about life around what we find and to make sure they know that they aren't alone either.
If we are the only ones, then we owe it to the universe to spread and multiply and fight entropy and bring life to every corner that will support it.
If we don't do this, we have failed as a species. It's that simple.
We will colonize or we will go extinct. Again, not a prediction, but an inevitability. This planet is so small, so fragile (so terrifyingly, incomprehensibly, small against the backdrop of the galaxy) that it is criminally negligent that we aren't trying to leave it now that we know how.
We must and we will but right now we seem to have forgotten that fact, and I admit that it terrifies me that we might not remember until I am dead and won't be able to see it.
Right now, six men live in space. They have been there since May and will be there for a few months longer. Their names are Satoshi Furukawa, Mike Fossum, Ron Garan, Alexander Samokutyaev, Sergei Volkov, and Andrey Borisenko. They pass over your heads every 91 minutes. Humans have lived in space since before I was born (though not always continuously).
When you point out to the average person on the street that humans are living in space right now, many of them will not believe you. Most of the rest will scrunch their foreheads and say "oh yeah... I think I knew that," or some equivalent.
That this is not a headline every day, that every person who goes on an ISS mission is not a hero when they come home, that people do not stare up in wonder and awe every moment because humans live in space is unfathomable to me.
In the last 20 years, the greatest and most astounding advances of science have been in computing. Most people alive today are keenly aware all the time of the leaps and bounds, of the almost miraculous power they carry with them all the time. That is good. It's better than good. I am every bit the predictable evangelical about the internet. I know all the good information technology has done for every industry and every corner of our economy. I know all about the revolutions being worked by changing communications. I know that this has probably done more good for actual human happiness than a millions space missions could ever do, in much the same way that advances in medicine have done more for human quality of life than a million moon walks. I won't denigrate those things for a moment.
But somewhere along the line, our excitement about the future ended up focused on the iPhone in our hand instead of the launch at Cape Canaveral.
Last generation, our collective fears and insecurities led us to... well, to a nuclear arsenal that could have extinguished us. But our fears also led us to space. They led us to strive, to be greater, to reach out rather than retrench.
Our insecurity right now has just led us to put metal detectors on every building and pat down air travelers. Our fear of being eclipsed has led to bickering over currency values and dire warnings about manufacturing and helplessness about infrastructure and education and investment. We can't even manage a bullet train. Regular old health insurance nearly broke the political system. All our debate right now is about how to do less -- not how to do more with less, but just how to do less. The most audacious dreams you'll hear voiced in Op-Eds center on maybe possibly changing immigration laws. We wrangle nonstop about the cost of everything without ever talking about its value.
It just makes me sad, a little bit, that our dreams have gotten so very small.
Everyone -- EVEYONE -- who feels even the smallest fraction of what I do about this needs to go watch To Touch the Face of God by destina, and good luck to the Atlantis crew for their safe return home.
This entry was originally posted at http://dragojustine.dreamwidth.org/132039.html. Please comment there using OpenID.