in Life's name and for Life's sake

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I'm just gonna interpret this question as planing for when I accompany the Doctor on his zany adventures through time and space. (This will, of course, obviously happen. I am female, almost ginger, and may possibly at some point in my life return to live in London. The odds are in my favor already.)

In no particular order, and with various degrees of specificity:

1. The 1790s in England. Yes, I know this is about as far from specific as I can get, but this is probably the historical decade I find the most intriguing. This is when Jane Austen became a writer (though not a published novelist), when Blake did some of his most intense engravings, when the French Revolution took a turn towards insanity and when the world was on the brink of so many major cultural changes. I would just want to live as a part of this for a while, to get a real feel for the things that fascinate me about this decade.

2. The World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention of 1968, which was held in Berkeley. Yes, this means there was once a conflation of Berkeley, the sixties, and SFF geeks. 1968 is the year that Anne McCaffrey's short story "Weyr Search" won the Hugo Award for best short story -- and this story is the one that was later extended into Dragonflight, the first of her Dragonriders of Pern books, and the first book that really got me into science fiction.

3. The first man on the moon, 1969. I just wonder what it must have felt like for those people who had lived in a time when no images of earth from space were readily available to see those first pictures from the Apollo mission, and to have a sudden jarring understanding of themselves as such a small part of such a small corner of the universe, but a corner that undeniably mattered.

4. Anything in which I got to meet Elizabeth I. Because she's just bound to be utterly badass. Maybe I would want to go see a Shakespeare play with her.

5. The fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. I was technically alive at the time, but had only been so for six months.

Undoubtedly as soon as I post this I will realize some incredibly significant historical event that I'm missing, but for the moment I think this is a pretty good list. I'm obviously most invested in the first three items; the others might rotate out with my mood.

A few of you probably remember the rant/essay that I posted a while back about the American space program and how we should be focusing on the problems of this world before we turn outward. Well, yesterday I posted that piece on fictionpress.com, and today when I checked my e-mail I had a single review. It read as follows:

"One of the reasons we go into space is to try and solve our problems. Like population. And energy. And food."

That was it -- no commentary on my writing itself, which is what I was hoping to receive when I posted to a writing-based site. Instead, I come away with a general statement, made by someone who I can only assume is an average person, detailing the reasons why people go into space -- at least, the reasons why the general public believes we go into space.

But somehow, those reasons just don't seem to cut it for me. In these cases, I still think space is not the answer.

I'll admit that population is a problem on this world, but I have a few solutions to that which have nothing to do with space. One of the first of these, which would be relatively simple in all of the developed world (which contains the only countries even remotely interested in spaceflight to begin with), is plain old birth control. The problem with population is that people have kids that they don't want. If people only had children because they wanted children, the population growth would become much more manageable, but the truth is that most people having sex don't want kids -- they just want the sex.

That easy solution aside, I'm not seeing how space travel would effectively solve the population problem anyway. In all honesty, by the time science has advanced enough to allow people to live in space or on the moon or Mars, the population on Earth will have already reached its threshold and some terrible disease will probably have ravaged the population. That's only if some terrible war doesn't happen first. Either way, one of the limiting factors to population will come into play long before colonizing other worlds is a feasible method for getting rid of excess population.

It becomes even harder for me to see how energy is to be gained by space travel. I mean, if we had the power to harness the nuclear fission of a star, then just maybe...but I even see two large problems with that idea. One, the star closest to Earth is our sun, and I don't want to be using up all of its fissionable material any time soon. Two, that amount of energy would only make it easier for us to blow ourselves up. Personally, I'm in favor of staying alive as long as possible, and I think the rest of the world will generally agree with me.

I'm also thinking that, apparently, the rest of the world hasn't realized exactly how much energy it takes to launch a space ship. What do they think rocket fuel is made of, anyway? If people were truly worried about energy, they'd petition their governments to take the money being currently spent on the space program and instead turn it toward finding fossil fuel alternatives. That would be a much more profitable endeavor.

And I don't even think I'm going to comment on food. Let's just say this: for all of you who didn't know, the moon is not really made of cheese.

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Oh, the terrors of ignorant reviewers. I didn't want to post this rebuttal on the site because then I'd be becoming one of those people I despise. But, I figure, whoever it was who said that isn't going to be reading my livejournal, since only my friends really read this. So it's slightly less venomous to post it here.

Still...it's interesting to think. I was just thinking about it, and I was about to write something along the lines of "people like this make me lose faith in humanity." But I realized before I wrote that that I never really lose faith in humanity. Sometimes I may joke about it...but I don't think I ever really can lose faith. Humanity just seems like too optimistic a concept to begin with. It treats us -- all of us, regardless of race or religion or nationality -- as a single, united group. That idea isn't one that seems prone to pessimism. Simply to have that thought in mind wipes away all negative images.

Oh, Lord, how I wish that that could one day be reality, even if I'm not around to see it. There are so many people I know who reaffirm my faith in humanity, and generally they are the ones I see daily. There's Deanna, who's just plain weird and likes it that way, and who's always ready to do something crazy just for the sake of making someone else smile. And Shannen, who's not afraid to be herself even when some people are afraid of her for it, and who's got inner demons I don't know about but who handles them admirably. Stephanie H. always smiles and wears her SPAD t-shirt with pride, being herself and not worrying about it. Steph B. is constantly hilarious in a quirky way that involves naming cars and lunchboxes as well as expressing herself in stories that include random dwarves. The amazing redheaded Stephanie is always there to offer up consolation, complements, or even just her company, depending on what's needed. And Natalie might scare some people, but her heart is one of the most open I've yet to find, willing always to accept and never to condemn.

If these wacky people are the future of our world...then somehow, I think the future might be looking up.

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I don't know quite where that came from...but it's all true. You guys are the greatest, and whether or not you agree with me, I say you're a good cause for optimism.

To me, manned spaceflight is pure humanism: the proof of the worth of humanity, a symbol of a world that is technologically advanced and open-minded, adventurous enough to go forth boldly into the great unknown of our time. It signifies the ultimate advance of science, but a science of awe and no longer one of boredom. Space is beautiful in a way that even a child can understand.

But it seems that manned spaceflight is no longer about science, or beauty, or even about the power of humanity as a whole. Now, it's about utility, and the last gasp of power from a nation slowly on the decline. For a while, it might work -- after all, the US has been on the top for so long now that I don't think many Americans could stand anything else -- but it would only be a momentary comeback. Napoleon had 100 days after he escaped from Elba. I'm not saying the United States has reached its exile yet. I am saying that we're headed there, and that we can only hope to keep our heads above the water for so long.

And as much as manned spaceflight is a concept I cherish, I don't think that's the last impression the world should get from us as a country. However, I do think a valuable lesson can be learned by looking at the world momentarily from an astronaut's point of view. Imagine, if you will, looking down on Earth from so far away -- maybe just from space, but possibly even from our moon itself, during a spacewalk, where all goes silent and you're left for a moment to just stare down at that wondrous orb slowly turning below. There are no red lines drawn to distinguish political boundaries. From space, you can't tell if the country you're looking at is even a country. Everything is now whole, complete, a single unit. You get a ponderous sense of everything there is touching everything else, being connected.

There are things that mar the connections, jagged scars that draw the eye and fix it there with a sort of morbid fascination. Places on our once-green homeworld are now a dull brown, trees felled for lumber or destroyed through fire. Rivers that should run aquamarine are sluggish and dull. Even the seas, those eternal reservoirs of blue, are no longer true to their original shade in places. Our world, though it is ours -- because it is ours? -- is no longer perfect.

But you don't need to leave the planet to figure that out; that fact is becoming more and more obvious from right here, where we stand. Wars are fought, children go hungry and die, weaponry becomes more advanced while democracy and diplomacy hurry to keep up with it and only marginally succeed. Neighboring nations squabble over things that range from serious to ridiculous, depending on where in the conflict you stand. It is the slow death of not just people, but of humanity as a whole. And before more money is spent on space, on all the flashy pyrotechnics and campaign goals inserted for public appeal, it needs to be spent on mending the rifts that have only grown wider on this world as America's focus has turned outward. After all, we've done our share to start some of the conflicts -- doesn't it follow that it's up to us to end them?

So as much as I love space, and as much as I dream of spaceflight, and the marvel that it invokes in the power of man to go wherever he believes he can, I think that our president's plans for the space program need to be put on hold. Space is not what we need to worry about now, the moon and Mars are not what we need to worry about. Neil Armstrong took that first step for mankind, and until that's a concept that can be once again realized and understood, the second step shouldn't come. We live here, and only here, on Earth -- shouldn't it come first?

Though I do propose one final shuttle flight before the space program is indefinitely suspended. I think that Mr. Bush should be taken up to the moon as part of a crew of astronauts, allowed to step out onto that white, powdered ground, and look down and see just how small the United States is -- just how small Earth is. And after his first moments of shocked silence and wonder, someone should join him out there, and look down on the same sight, and remind him that this, all of it, is what he really vowed to protect when he decided to be the leader of the most influential country in the world. And that this, all of it, is what he needs to be focusing on -- this needs to come first.