We like to believe that we’re motivated by lofty aspirations and that the higher we aim, the better we will be as a result. To gauge precisely how high the human aim is, we could look at how much we spend on it, globally. Oops.
So, looking instead at graphs of past achievements, imminent and far future plans alongside money already spent and likely budgets, Space Exploration comes out on top but why? What do we get for all those billions spent annually for everyone on the planet? Well, the ultimate dream is for ‘A Place Among the Stars’ and the means to get there in one piece.
That last sentence directly and indirectly references two tracks by the great Hans Zimmer for the movie ‘Interstellar’. His soundtrack is unforgettable and truly evocative of our highest human calling. These and many others stir the human spirit into action and then keep us focused.
Star Trek and its many later mutations, Avatar, Alien and Star Wars epics combine with countless truly great productions to show that humanity can boldly go into warp-drive and seal that greatest aspiration of ‘A Place Among the Stars’.
Moon Colonies by 2028 and another on Mars soon afterwards are proof that we are not bluffing. We’re really going out there and misty eyed pen pushers like me choke up and try our damndest to produce ever better stories of what we’ll likely be doing after we’ve arrived at that mega milestone for humanity. In fact, I’m getting close to finishing my latest right now - but this one is very different. Bear with me for a couple more paragraphs while I explain why.
There seems to be some PC unstated ban on two words: ‘China-Virus’ even though that’s where the thing came from. On the other hand, the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-20 infected a quarter of the global population killing anywhere from 17 to 100 million, but it didn’t start in Spain. China on the other hand has an undeniable record of exporting these deadly diseases, so why not call a spade a spade and keep everything real?
That’s not to suggest that the Chinese people did this deliberately, because they didn’t. It was accidental but these things happen when people crowd out and get too close to pathogens that are normally innocent parasites on or inside other creatures who live on Earth alongside us. The China-Virus is just a symptom of a far more serious malady associated with global warming, pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, burning fossil fuels, forest and bush firestorms, severe weather with melting ice caps, sea levels rising while methane bubbles up unstoppably in the background. If it's not clear now, then it soon will be, that we have triggered multiple extinction level events.
The thing is, that when we do get out there and look back, we’re not going to see the same constellations because we won’t have the same point of view. Our own shining star will feature in one of those new constellations and we’ll have to come up with a name for it. Only then will we realise that we always had 'A Place Among the Stars … for free … and we screwed it.
This book will tell it like it really is but I'll try to find some hope to put in there. There has to be hope, right?
