We Have Cabin Fever

Reason the Fourth: We Have Cabin Fever

This post is Part 5 in a 5 Part series about why space travel should be made a priority by governments, world leaders, private companies, engineers, scientists, and teachers. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Thanks for visiting!

It's a small world, after all. It's a small, small world.

In fact, I want to go back in time a bit to 1964, when the It's a Small World ride was designed for the New York World's Fair.  Walt Disney was trying to emphasize harmony and unity among all of the nations of the world. Even the song itself was composed specifically to harmonize the five different languages it is sung in during the ride.

It's a Small World

"Because of the repetition and because the Sherman Brothers used a musical technique called counterpoint, where the same chords are played over and over again but with different melodies, the song they wrote is catchy and unforgettable," it says on Disney World's website.

And it blends all of the nations together in a seamless experience which will be stuck in your head for the next several years.

The ride was meant to connect nations under one idea, that we all live on the same rock, about 95 million miles away from the sun. You might say we're all stuck in one earth-sized cabin in the cold, vast, arctic cold of space.  And it doesn't matter how big your cabin is if you've got too many people living there. 

And whatever Walt Disney hoped for, we do not live together peacefully.

In a time when globalization has made the world one big neighborhood, everyone knows everyone else and can connect as easy as clicking "request friend" on Facebook or "follow" on twitter. We cat fight about things so obscure or so specialized that most people hate each other for reasons they can't remember or don't fully understand or both.

We snap at each other like siblings who have shared the same room for too long. We go to war over land and oil and money and religion.... It's not like war is a new idea that sprung up because we've been on Earth too long, but maybe if we had more space. Well, unless you fancy season-long days and ice cold temperatures, deep sea pressure, or the scalding heat and blowing sand of the Sahara....

There is no more room.

And that's when we turn our gaze up and peer out of our cabin's skylight. Suddenly, the siblings' feuds die down. We are united by one goal: find out what is beyond that pane of atmosphere.

Separating all the waring cultures of Earth might not actually solve all of the issues. You can't stop people fighting for the things they love, nor should you. And there will always be differences between us. 

But the one thing we all have in common is the Earth below us and the sky above.

Wouldn't it be nice to face outward for a while? To look away from our tired arguing and fighting and debating and nagging and find something new and fantastic, simply for the pleasure of discovering something new?

The immensity of space, that vastness of unconquered wilderness is inspiring to me. To use a writerly analogy, it's like a brand new journal, fresh and clean, just waiting for you to mold it into your own image. In it you will discover much, create much. It is a grand beginning.

We must take the plunge and venture forth. (I feel a Star Trek reference coming on.) We must "boldly go where no man has gone before." 

And if we find intelligent life out there, all of a sudden all of the People of Earth will become one People. To risk sounding like a wishy-washy-lovey-dovey hippie, we could really use something to focus us like that. If we are going to be a truly global society, we need to start acting like one.

To wrap it all up, space travel and exploration is an essential part of what makes us human, what makes us special and different. In The Lion King when Timon, Pumba and Simba are digesting a big meal after a good day and laying back looking at the stars, Pumba and Simba have very "human" answers as to what they are. Pumba is completely correct (for the wrong reasons and comic relief) that they are "balls of gas burning billions of miles away." Simba takes a more spiritual, cultural tack, repeating what Mufasa told him as a cub: that the stars is where their ancestors dwell, watching down on them. Timon is the only one who answeres like an animal. He tells the others with his characteristic confidence that the stars are "fireflies stuck up in that big, bluish-black thing." Perhaps more telling is his preamble to this. "Pumba, I don't wonder. I know." He is not curious, he does not question, he simply gives himself all the explanation he needs and moves forward.

But we are curious beings. We have a need to know things and we get there by wondering ceaselessly.  We want to know why we are, who we are, where we are, if we're alone....

The study of space can help us answer these questions, and ask more. Looking upward and outward and forward is part of our being human, and having conquered Earth, space is truly the next frontier.

It's a big, big, universe
So many dimensions
And unanswered questions...

Not to mention, life
What an invention,
Life.

from
"Life"
by Darren Criss
from the sci-fi comedy
YouTube musical

Starship 

Act 1, Part 6

Endeavor's Swan Song

Endeavor launched for its last mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo Credit

Monday, May 16, 2011, the space shuttle Endeavor left Earth for it's last mission, springing up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early morning.

News channels broadcast the reports, and there were many mentions of it being Endeavor's last launch. The spacewalks planned are the last. Atlantis is scheduled for a launch June 28, but when Endeavor gets back, it will be grounded for good.

Propelling people and things into space is an expensive and dangerous operation, and I can understand that its risks and costs seem to outweigh the benefits when our nation itself is in so much debt. I understand the motivation behind it.

But I still don't like it.

Now, it doesn't mean the end of American space exploration. The hiatus is only supposed to be for about six years or so, and there have been blocks of inactivity before, and longer.

Also, there is a private company, SpaceX which has successfully launched a satellite and returned it safely to earth.  They won $75 million dollars from NASA as a part of the Commercial Crew Development initiative, which is to help private companies compete. The goal is to delegate some of the repair and maintenance work to private companies like this.

Let me diverge a bit here, because I love that idea. Like I mentioned before, spaceflight and exploration is dangerous and expensive, but it's also fascinating. It piques the imagination of kids and grown-ups alike. And I am glad that there are to be more channels to pursue space exploration than just through NASA.  Everyone knows that markets are improved by competition. Ideas are improved the same way. For us to move forward, we need the creativity and scientific prowess of many people, and the Commercial Crew Development initiative fosters that.

And that may be the best path for future space explorations. Because I have no doubt at all that they should continue. And I firmly believe that space exploration, travel, and experimentation should be a top priority on everyone's lists.

The next few days, I'll post my 4 reasons why space travel should be made a priority by governments, world leaders, private companies, engineers, scientists, and teachers. Follow my blog or follow me on Twitter @jajaamanda to be alerted to when the next one is up!

UPDATE: They are all up, and you can peruse them at your leisure here: 

Reason the First: Humans are Harmful

Reason the Second: The Science! The Science!

Reason the Third: Space is Cool! It's Big! It's Different!
Reason the Fourth: We Have Cabin Fever

Should Majority Rule?

I've been incubating an idea.

It's not an executable idea. It's not something that once I decide whether it's good or bad, I can implement it. It's one of those ideas about the way a person views the world. It's a decision I'll make, and it affects some pretty big things about how I think, how I work, how I vote, and how I grow.

When I incubate ideas, sometimes subconsciously over a period of years, I give them names. Key words. This one I think of as faith and leadership. When I conceive of something like this, have the idea for the very first time, I kind of tuck it away in the back of my mind and set it there to simmer. To incubate. Think of it like a Google news alert. Google allows a user to receive e-mail alerts based on a keyword. So If you put in "Barack Obama," not only will your inbox explode, Google will e-mail you every time their search engine returns news results that mention Barack Obama. In the same fashion, every time I come across something that adds to, contradicts, or reaffirms this idea conception I have, the idea itself becomes deeper, more complete and I understand more about it.

This idea, faith and leadership, started probably six or seven years ago. I was a part of an internet community that featured a mailing list, a website, chats, and other interactive activities. The girls who organized it all tried to keep their growing community in order, but some of the members seemed upset. Why was this not done faster? Why were they not allowed to do this? Why was this person not accepted into the group? Why was this thing not done fairly? One of the girls who organized it all got fed up and sent an e-mail out to everyone that basically said, "Listen, it takes a lot of planning, organization, and time to run this, and we do it for fun, and so you can have fun. We made the choices we made for a reason, and although we realize that you are all valued members, we are the ones who can see the whole picture. So sometimes you're just going to have to trust that we're making the right decision."

Hm, I thought to myself. Sometimes you just have to have faith in leaders. And the idea was conceived. It popped up again from time to time in fantasy books I'd read, where kings and queens made difficult, sometimes unpopular decisions. The leaders were valiant and wise, and the people, who would then experience better conditions, would soon see that their leader had made the correct choice.

In other things, I'd realize that blind faith, following leaders who are not in fact making wise choices, is not desirable at all. Consoling oneself with my idea, with the rationale "well, he must know more than I do," to justify political apathy isn't acceptable. It isn't very American. In America, the people insist on being heard. All affairs are not up to the leader. It is not considered wise to simply have faith.

To bounce back like a bouncy ball, I recently saw this article: Bush says he didn't compromise soul to be popular. He says, "What do you expect? We've got a major economic problem and I'm the president during the major economic problem. I mean, do people approve of the economy? No. I don't approve of the economy. ... I've been a wartime president. I've dealt with two economic recessions now. I've had, hell, a lot of serious challenges. What matters to me is I didn't compromise my soul to be a popular guy." Which to me, is a valid sentiment. I mean, in many of my classrooms I've seen a banner: "What is right is not always popular, what is popular is not always right." And certainly, just because many of my contemporaries are running into a busy street doesn't mean that I'm not assessing the situation for myself.

But we've been taught that majority rules. Our country is built on this principle. Every person has a voice, every person has a vote. Beyond voting, we can contact members of congress. We have freedom of press, we can gather supporters. We can impeach leaders we don't approve of. We have a lot of say.

But for the same reason that we need to trust our leaders to make decisions, the idea that they have a wider view of a decisions effects, are we qualified to have this vote? The majority rules: what if the majority rules badly? What if the majority is not qualified to rule? How on earth would we know? Think of the world as a cosmic game of chess. If we can only see one or two of the chess pieces near us, but there is one person with a vantage point who can see the entire board, even if there are more people with limited vision, wouldn't you trust the person who can see?

Perhaps not. Perhaps the person who can see could lose on purpose. Perhaps the person who can see won't relay truthful information. Perhaps the person who can see is a great climber, but not a great chess player.

I think the answer to this is the answer to most of the conflicting ideas I have: There must be a middle ground. In the chessboard analogy, perhaps the game could be played if the many on the board who have limited views all shared their views and made a sort of conglomerate image of the game. Perhaps the answer is not blind faith in a farther-seeing leader. Perhaps the answer is a responsible majority, who work together.