Space brings back boyish wonder
I've been having a hard week; some real reasons, some stupid brain chemistry. But every time I get low I just start thinking about the fact that Curiosity is trundling around Mars right now and sending us back pictures. It probably helps that I have somehow firmly decided that Curiosity has a personality similar to my cat. Do you think it rolls over and tucks it's head in upside to look extra cute for pettins from Mars!creatures?
I have this incredible feeling, so much of the time, that I live in the future. Do you think each generation feels like that? I look at the science fiction I grew up reading and so much of it is coming true. Space exploration, privatised space travel, finding Amelia Earhart, finding the Higgs Boson, finding dark matter!, and of course, the zombies in Florida. That last one is a little more petrifying than exciting. It puts me in mind of the Mira Grant books; this is how it starts. Not with a full on attack and panic and news. But with a couple news stories that no one pays much attention to and the geeks joke about being zombies and then all of a sudden it's too late. But maybe what the zombie stories never told you is that it could go slowly enough that we could find a cure, or go off into space or something first.
Or I'll go live on a cruise ship. Provided these zombies can't swim, I think it's safe and kind of genius.
We might one day have a unified theory of physics. That seemed like this impossible and incredible crazy dream theory in high school. We might go into space! Like, not just humanity. But like, me. I could. Maybe. One day. My kids seriously could. (If the zombies don't eat them first.)
I've wondered, a lot, what it was like to watch NASA put a man on the moon. My entire life I knew that was something we'd already done. I mean, obviously it's fancy and cool to think about, but in some weird way I guess I'm jaded? It was never news to me. I never had any doubt that you couldn't go to the moon. But this is mine. This is me seeing proof that we don't stop, we don't give up and we keep exploring.
I can't stop thinking about this dialogue from West Wing's Galileo episode:
Sam: 'There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry 'cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber 'cause we went to the moon.
Mal: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam:Yes.
Mal: Why?
Sam: 'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next.
I have this incredible feeling, so much of the time, that I live in the future. Do you think each generation feels like that? I look at the science fiction I grew up reading and so much of it is coming true. Space exploration, privatised space travel, finding Amelia Earhart, finding the Higgs Boson, finding dark matter!, and of course, the zombies in Florida. That last one is a little more petrifying than exciting. It puts me in mind of the Mira Grant books; this is how it starts. Not with a full on attack and panic and news. But with a couple news stories that no one pays much attention to and the geeks joke about being zombies and then all of a sudden it's too late. But maybe what the zombie stories never told you is that it could go slowly enough that we could find a cure, or go off into space or something first.
Or I'll go live on a cruise ship. Provided these zombies can't swim, I think it's safe and kind of genius.
We might one day have a unified theory of physics. That seemed like this impossible and incredible crazy dream theory in high school. We might go into space! Like, not just humanity. But like, me. I could. Maybe. One day. My kids seriously could. (If the zombies don't eat them first.)
I've wondered, a lot, what it was like to watch NASA put a man on the moon. My entire life I knew that was something we'd already done. I mean, obviously it's fancy and cool to think about, but in some weird way I guess I'm jaded? It was never news to me. I never had any doubt that you couldn't go to the moon. But this is mine. This is me seeing proof that we don't stop, we don't give up and we keep exploring.
I can't stop thinking about this dialogue from West Wing's Galileo episode:
Sam: 'There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry 'cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber 'cause we went to the moon.
Mal: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam:Yes.
Mal: Why?
Sam: 'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next.