Up, Up and Away!

If you've read three or more of my blog posts, you know that I think humanity's future lies in Space. And I tend more toward the "Shining city upon a hill" view of our future colonies, rather than post-apocalyptic outposts teetering on the brink of disaster.

And I hope, those shining new colonies will not be born of some global catastrophe on Earth like the current migration out of Africa and the Middle East. It is post-apocalyptic. Many of those people are not looking for a better life. They're just looking for any life at all.

I do not fancy an Earth left in smoking ruins. I don't think it will happen like that.

Humans have always moved on from their natal homes. They seek wealth, adventure, a new vista, a safer place to raise their children. A place where they can build the life they want. I don't think emigration from Earth will be any different. We'll have people who want one or more of these things just like we always have had.

Just as we do have.

I think colonies in Space will happen as they always have. Explorers will be inspired by the possibility of "going where no man has gone before." The new Columbuses will be funded by entrepreneurs who see the possibility of wealth by providing resources more abundantly and more cheaply.

Scientists will hitch a ride with the new Hudson Bay Companies to expand humanity's knowledge.
All manner of Engineers, will imagine and design better ways to get there, to live there. And the rest of us will go for the jobs, for the better neighborhoods. For the same reasons we up-stakes and move to a new town today. Eventually we'll even move to a colony because that's where the one we love is from and has family they want to be near.

That's just the way we humans work.

Yes is the answer. Space is our Future.

Up, up and away!

You Can't Have Too Many Cooks.

from evpersoneli.net

    "I've been thinking," my husband says as he comes into the room. Those of you who know us know that that is my line. At which, he rolls his eyes, puts down his book, and waits to hear just what scheme I've come up with now. 

    You notice I leave out the adjective "harebrained" which he would not be so rude as to say out loud.

    But, since it is he who has begun the conversation with that line I have no idea how to respond. He sees my confusion and explains, "Your mystery virus."

    Now I'm really confused. I was quietly working an online jigsaw puzzle with my brain (hare- or otherwise) happily parked in neutral.

    "For your book," he says. "You said you wanted a virus." There followed an interesting, in depth explanation of the corona family of viruses. 

    And he's absolutely right. I need an airborne virus for my new book. One that is likely to continue to evolve into the future and spread havoc among humans.

    Being a mystery writer, I'm always in the market for a poison, a sharp instrument, a lethal creature, any interesting mode of murder. And because my books take place in the future I need causes of death that are plausible -- a virus that might exist when we humans are living in colonies in space. 

    I talk to today's doctors, police officers, computer scientists, plumbers, cooks, everybody. They can imagine future changes in their fields. Those changes may seem fantastical today, but they just might happen. After all, it hasn't been very long ago that things we depend on daily didn't exist, at least not the way they do today.

    Like cell phones. I was trying to think of items that could be easily stolen and sold. The cell phone would be good. It's small enough to conceal and walk away with, but my daughter pointed out that the technology already exists to render a phone inoperable if it's stolen. And a phone that won't work has no value. Many electronics can be traced if they're stolen and in the future they probably all will be tagged some way, making them unsaleable. She suggested jewelry. Of course!

    I love it when my friends and family share their imaginations with me. 

    Stories that take place in the future need musical instruments that don't exist today, games, entertainments, sports, vices. 

    Safe to say, all the old vices will still be around, they'll just be marketed in different forms. And like I'm fond of saying, "Humans will always be human and murder happens."

   

Neil Alden Armstrong

On a grainy black and white television, I watched Neil Alden Armstrong step on the moon July 20, 1969.

People completely disinterested in the event filled the room. Old people whose first trip away from small-town Oklahoma was to go to WWII. And a baby less than two-weeks-old, visiting from its small-town in New Mexico. That baby’s older siblings argued and played with their dog. The baby’s parents, grandparents, and an assortment of other adult relatives chatted and cooed. I felt like I was the only person in the room who cared about the picture on the TV, being received in an American heartland room, live from the moon. And maybe that day, I was. At least in that room.

I knew that with that small step and giant leap we as a species were starting our emigration away from our natal planet.

We all come from a long line of immigrants. My great-grandparents came from the old-country. Someday one of my great-grand-children or great-great-grandchildren will say they came from the old-world. And their new world will truly be a new world, not just a new continent, or a new country, or a new neighborhood.

I do not believe that I will visit a colony on the moon. But I do believe that I will live long enough to see other people do just that. Average people. Not only highly trained, physically fit astronauts hired by and representing this nation or that one. But a geologist from a state university somewhere in this old world, going to do research. A teacher husband joining his doctor wife. He will be one of many to teach the colony’s children. And she will be one of many to provide professional support to the colony’s growing population. A population of miners and mechanics and technicians and restaurateurs and grocers and all the other people who make a community thrive.

That teacher will teach the children about astronauts from the 20^th Century who rode the ships into space. He may not take the time to teach them about the dreamers and the scientists and the regular people just like them who made it possible for humans to out-migrate from Earth. But he will teach them about Neil Alden Armstrong, the first human being to stand on the moon.