Aliens Moved My Cheese
Chapter 34: Houston We Have a Problem

“Don’t Dream it…. be it.” -Dr. Frankenfurter (The Rocky Horror Picture Show).

I was born the year the first men landed on the moon. Fuck I’m old…that sucks! I have always been fascinated with the thought of traveling to other worlds, meeting alien chicks and fucking them. This has been well established. It is that spirit of exploration that has always set man above the beasts. What other animal looks to the horizon and wonders what is out there? What other earth creature can contemplate traveling to the stars? We are capable of being brave, brilliant, inquisitive and let’s face it hopelessly romantic. Yes we can act like self- destructive, ignorant, savages as well but that is the dichotomy of mankind. We are what we are and should not apologize for it. The human spirit of exploration has in my opinion always been one of our finest characteristics. We currently have only two frontiers left to conquer, earth’s oceans and outer space. Exploring underneath the sea is immediately doable if we invested the time, energy and resources to accomplish that goal but in true human form we want to run before we can crawl, so we have our eyes on the stars.

“Houston we have a problem.” The distances between star systems are frighteningly vast. We do not currently have the technology available to travel at the speed of light, let alone at faster than light speed (if that is even possible). We can contemplate a time when warp drives might be feasible but the reality is we aren’t even close yet. The solution is investing more time, money and research into solving the problem of faster than light speed starship drives. In the USA that’s not going to happen any time soon. The Republican politicians cut NASA’s budget and they can’t see further on down the road than what might occur in their own lifetime if that. Imagine if you will what would have happened if Ferdinand and Isabella had told Columbus “Hey Chris I just don’t see how searching for the New World benefits us. I don’t see a future in it.” Now granted these are also the assholes that brought us the Spanish Inquisition but I’m not keeping score. It’s that sort of short sighted thinking that holds us back as a species. The Russians are just struggling to get by, so they won’t be any help. Maybe it’ll be 2 billion screaming Chinamen who will get the job done? By the way guys love your food. Big thumbs up bro! The point is we have to give something to get something we want. In this case we want to play Buck Rogers, so we have to develop the technology required to go visit Ming the Merciless.

I find it highly amusing that our own science fiction helps feed our scientific community with innovative ideas about space travel and other advances in technology. Remember the original Star Trek series? They foresaw cell phones in the 1960’s i.e. the Starfleet Communicator. They inspired an entire generation of physicists and engineers to postulate about methods of faster than light travel and antimatter drives, which has resulted in the construction of particle accelerators that have discovered the existence of antimatter. Science fiction writers foresaw the creation of small super computers at a time when you needed a computer the size of a building with vacuum tubes instead of microchips to play a simple game of chess. Maybe science fiction writers are like the prophets of our historical era? They imagine what scientists later investigate and create. I particularly like the Dune Series, which envisioned the bending of space time, to in effect create instantaneous travel to any point in the universe. That would alleviate the need to hurl ourselves into space at faster than light speed which as my brother has indicated is a very risky proposition at best. I’m not concerned with the risks involved with light speed travel anyway. The explorers during the Age of Exploration took huge risks and lost many lives throwing themselves into the unknown. No balls no glory. That kind of goes with the territory. Lives will be lost in pursuit of this lofty ambition that much is certain. It has never stopped us in the past, why should it stop us now?

Now hypothetically let’s say we can’t figure out a way to travel at light speed or faster than light speed. That would not necessarily preclude us from throwing ourselves into the void just for shits & giggles. Generation ships flying at slower than light speed could be constructed and sent out on missions of exploration and colonization. If we advance our biomedical tech and discover how to place people in suspended animation, the trip wouldn’t be as isolating and mind numbing. One of my favorite sci-fi movies “Pandorum” suggests such a potential option. Maybe that’s a bad example? In the movie part of the crew mutates, turns cannibal and eats the rest of the crew but I think you can see where I’m going with this? If so, I’m glad somebody gets it. I have no idea where I’m going with this? I think if we manage to survive as a species long enough, we will find a way to explore our cosmos. In my opinion that is an inevitability because that’s just how we humans roll. We simply need to mature as a species and stop engaging in primitive tribal infighting. The only thing we need to establish is the will to reach out and grab what we want and everything else including technology will rush to play catch up with our dreams. In the end that’s what our desire to reach the stars boils down to. We are a race of dreamers with a dream of meeting E.T. over the next horizon and we are just creative enough and innovative enough to figure out a way to accomplish that goal. I know I won’t live to see it but the fact that I can conceive it is half the battle towards the accomplishment of the goal. Damn that was deep! I feel like singing an out of tune rendition of “We Are Defenders of the Faith” by Judas Priest now. Somebody stop me!

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