Space; the final frontier

Enough about how much the new trek movie sucked already.

It was horrible. It was a slap in the face. It was badly written, badly directed, badly filmed, badly executed, and badly everything it could've been better and shoul've been. 'nuff said.

Instead of bitching about trek, today I'm going to bitch about the constellation program having been cancelled by Obama.

This was a teeny little news story; reported and virtually uncommented on by anyone in the real media.

Now, I know a lot of people call the internet the 'new media', but it's not new, and it's only media the same way a painting is a media. Anyone can do it, but not everyone has talent; thus not everyone should. People just haven't figured that out yet.

Yes, people on the net have mentioned it. I'm mentioning it as well.

But so what?

Need I remind you that the last thing this new media introduced to the old media that almost radically changed the world was Sarah friggin' Palin. If that's not enough to get people to understand that they need to be more careful out here, nothing will.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! My point here is that the new media is mostly a place for us to rant and gripe and it shouldn't be taken too seriously... and I was then going to rant and gripe about the constellation program having been cancelled.

So; no more manned space program. Billions of dollars have been flushed down the drain, once more, by the Obama Administration. This is, of course, nothing even remotely new. But the manned space program also cost lives. There are also people out there unconvinced we even left our planet in the first place.

Of course I'm not arguing we should continue to explore space with manned missions to get insane CTers to shut the eff up. I'm just saying it would be a very nifty side effect. And something we would all directly benefit from.

Obama stated he wants private corporations more involved in the space program. Asinine. A corporation is in the business of making a profit. The only thing space is good for monitarily at this point, is putting up more sats so we can get more cellular coverage so more people can self indulgently twitter from anywhere in the world and shareholders can profit.

That's not me being glib. That's simple truth.

Okay, I'm being a little glib.

But the truth is space is only profitable in the long haul. It's one of the few things I want my government involved in. It's one of the few things I want my tax dollars going to.

A business must show a profit every quarter. Government isn't business. It never has been, as much as those in government want it to be. The welfare of the people and the continuation of it's people are it's primary responsibility, or at least it should be.

Manned space exploration ultimately benefits everyone. Just not right away. Not to be an alarmist here; but someone needed to fund Christopher Columbus. The America's were discovered by the Vikings centuries before; and as profiteers, they couldn't make a profit from it so it went virtually unheard of. Spain couldn't make a profit from it at first either. Nor could England.
But eventually well... 500 years later; the United States of America remains, however tenuously, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Things move so much more quickly now that few people seem to want to think in long term goals. 50 years, 10 years? Please... even 4 year presidential terms seem to take forever for this generation. A week, maybe two, is considered long term these days.

Space is big. Seriously there's not much else that can be said about it. It's big. Huge. In fact, it doesn't friggin end. That's too big to even imagine.

It's also brutal. Many say it's cold. This is half true. Deep space is damn cold. And anywhere near a star is damn hot. Somehow people forget about this thing called radiation. Stars are nuclear fusion reactors. Yeah. Our oil is about to run out. Lets research into 'alternative' energy sources.

We can't get energy from fusion yet, not worthwhile amounts. Nope. For us to get a hot fusion reaction we have to spend more energy than we get out most of the time.

But billions of stars out there do. And each one burns for a few million years.

And our sun is only eight light seconds away.

You seriously don't want to go out into space?

You just want to keep sending probes and sats?

Probes; no problem. But eventually we have to get off this rock.

Seriously. Every day we don't set up a colony elsewhere, on the moon or mars for instance, we take one more step towards extinction.

And, I don't care whether you believe in evolution. Just as I don't care whether you believe in relativity or basic math. Facts are facts. We're not going to evolve much anymore barring great changes.

Physically speaking; we're a lackluster specimen at best. Not if, but when, another ice age hits, we're back to survival of the fittest. Yes; we'll still have basic societies and we'll still do our best to help one another out. But at some point we'll go back to our pragmatic roots and we will no longer care about the sickly and the weak and the deep thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the religious, the philosphers, the entertainers. We'll only care about the hunters and the gatherers and the sexually mature and fertile in order to survive.

If we are to continue in the information age; we have to realize we must protect ourselves. We must do everything we can to protect our species to ensure any environmental changes do not destroy us and reset our clocks; effectively wiping out the last 10,000 years of progress.

We are on the brink. We have been for the last two or three generations. And slowly, but surely, we're speeding towards the precipice, and most of us seem to be rather blind.

But if we can survive on the moon. In an environment that's hostile, alien, has no atmosphere, 1/6th our gravity, and at the extremes of both hot and cold...

Then we can survive here on Earth no matter what mother nature throws at us (well, short of a red giant or Nova, but we have a few million years before we have to worry over that problem). We require technology to survive. We need it. We lack claws and teeth and thick hides. We only have huge brains. Either we show that evolution has not invested badly into our giant brains by continuing our journey into space; or we use those brains to delude ourselves that god has a special place for us and to hell with the rest of humanity.

Your choice. I, personally, would choose the former. Obama has chosen the latter for everyone. And hardly anyone seems to even be upset about it.