Thought Exercises On Space
A Few Thought Exercises When It Comes To Space
By Dave McDaniel, everyone’s sorta-smart space uncle.
Contents
The World Is Your Oyster
Too Much Help?
Life Outside
Despicable Me
Destination Space
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Humbly tendered for your consideration.
A few thought exercises to fire the ol’ neurons. To give your brain something to chew on when it comes to space.
Let’s call it things to make you go “Hmmm”.
The World Is Your Oyster
Imagine the world is yours.
The whole damn thing.
Everything and everyone in it.
But it’s the only one you have.
There’s currently no way to get another one if this one goes kaplooey. Some of the games you play on this world are kind of risky. Some could even mess it up, bad. That happens and … no more world. All the fun stuff you used to do (assuming you like to do stuff) goes away. Your world, no more.
How would you guard against that?
Sure you could be more careful, and maybe you should, but accidents happen. One big enough “oops” and that’s it.
If there was a way to insure against that loss, a way to have other places to play (as needed), would you do it?
Even if the effort was high?
Would a guard against extinction be worth your attention?
Would it be worth working for?
Too Much Help?
Another. Extrapolate what might be the outer limits of such a concept as a world of space fans.
What if all 8 billion of us suddenly started thinking about space?
If the entire world, every man, woman and child, suddenly had it in mind either to know about what was happening in the space industry or, perhaps worse, to actively get involved …
Would that even work?
As hard as we’re pushing in that direction, that sort of “logical end” might yield gigantic traffic jams.
Are there enough projects on the lineup?
Right now we humans are launching a bunch of satellites, planning a few new space stations and upgrades, working on how to establish a presence on the moon and, ultimately, Mars, only …
How much help can any of those take?
Seems like they need tons of help, and they do, but would a sudden, total, global enthusiasm overwhelm rather than assist?
In order to picture that scenario we could imagine it like a barn raising.
Say you and old Zeb are out trying to hoist up a brand new barn, with all the fixin’s, and you’re desperately looking for help. You expect a few of the neighbors to show up, hoping maybe they’ll bring a few friends to pitch in.
That’d be perfect.
So you put out the word, and you say, “Hey! This thing we’re doing is a great thing and it will be perfect for the community, and if we only had more barns how great would that be? Come on over and help!”
Your goal is to get that barn up, maybe even another. You’ve got enough wood for at least three, actually, plus you have plans for a silo—if you can get to it.
Suddenly, all of New York City shows up.
9 million eager people, interested and ready to help.
Um …
What happens in that scenario?
You’ll get your barns up, that’s for sure, probably in record time, and your silo, but damn if that’s not a lot of wasted potential.
For this thought exercise, then, try to imagine how our current space industry could possibly respond if everyone on the planet suddenly wanted in.
Where would we start? What would everyone do?
How would we maximize that desire to help?
Life Outside
Imagine you live on a bed.
Fun.
You’ve never left it.
Maybe not so fun.
You can see the bedroom. You can see a few things out the window. From what you see out the window—other houses—along with evidence you can perceive from the bed, you conclude the house your bedroom is in may also have other rooms. Rooms you could get to.
Only thing is, you’ve not yet figured out how to get far from the bed.
In fact, you’ve only figured out how to walk around its edges. Kind of exciting, to be off the bed, inspiring, even, to see it from that angle (Look! I can see my pillow from here!), but you always need to keep a hand on it.
That’s as far as you’ve been.
The rest of the room looks quite exciting. You’ve figured out how to throw things across it. Even though you can’t go anywhere in the room, you can see those places (a desk on the far wall is particularly fascinating), and you can throw things that reach those places.
You’ve landed a few socks on the intriguing desk.
Even more exciting, those possibilities only have to do with the bedroom. How great would it be to be able to go check out the rest of the house? Let alone the stuff outside the window. Those other houses out there. Who knows who might be living in them. And who knows what might be beyond even them.
The world outside the window looks like a really vast place.
You see the analogy.
Being stuck to Earth is like being stuck to the bed.
Laying in bed is nice. In fact, truth is the bed is our refuge. We were probably born in a bed, we’ll probably die there. We have our best dreams in bed.
But never being able to leave the bed? Never being able to venture out into the world?
No bueno.
Yet that’s the way we’ve always lived.
Really imagine such an existence. Imagine seeing all that out there, all around you, but not being able to get to it. To touch it. To experience it. Imagine being stuck to your bed. Being left only to look, and to wonder, and to dream.
We don’t know about you, but that makes us a little sad.
Luckily, for the first time, at this moment in our existence, we can actually begin to figure out ways to venture across the room. How to get up and go sit at that desk. After that … maybe even how to go to the rest of the house.
And outside?
One glorious day, we might even make it there.
But only if we make it our priority.
The bed is comfortable.
The bed is easy.
We can’t stay in the bed forever.
Despicable Me
One last thought exercise. We’re pretty much full of them, so apologies.
Let’s make this last one a dark one.
Just for fun.
Assume a secret cabal does exist. A shadow group dedicated to … anything despicable. Pick your evil cause, and these guys are up to it.
Even they should be behind establishing an extraplanetary existence.
If they’re smart enough to run the world from the shadows, they surely can’t be stupid enough not to realize that same world that’s fragile for the rest of us is fragile for them too. Right?
We die, they die.
Pretty dumb if they’re thinking otherwise.
Hello? You’re stuck on the same island as the rest of us.
Yeah, yeah, we know. You’re king of the biggest international drug slash terror slash arms-dealing black-lotus triad in known history. Hollywood writes action movies based on your epic bad-assness. You eat lesser villains for breakfast, dining on their livers with some fava beans and a nice chianti. You’re dark. You’re to be feared. You haunt the most epic tech-noir dance clubs, where the beautiful people vogue in thumping clouds of smoke and blacklight lasers (lasers!). You know way more than we do. Obviously. You understand how the world really works. You make deals in your Doctor Doom fortress of dread we could never comprehend …
Blah, blah, blah.
You’re stuck here just like the rest of us.
Get over yourself for a minute.
Join the human race, at least for a bit, and start playing a real game. Help with the stuff that matters. We’re actually fun to work with, believe it or not.
Would it help if we said we have cookies?
Come over from the dark side. Put your shoulder to the winning wheel—at least until we’re not tied to this one planet—and let’s see what we can do.
Help us get the show on the road.
Then, when we’re done, once we have a few more options … if you haven’t grown to like us by then, feel free to go back to being Bond villains.
Better yet, Space Villains.
A whole new era of evil.
See?
Everyone improves in this game.
Come on, despicable guys. Help us get there.
Destination Space
In a way getting to space is old news. Been there, done that.
From a wider view, and to use yet another analogy, we’ve really only put a raft in the pond behind our house and demonstrated we can float.
In that analogy there’s a whole world out there, so much of it accessible by water.
Lots and lots of water.
Vast stretches, seas and oceans, much of it treacherous.
Now that we can float …
What opportunities does that present?
When it comes to space, we’ve conquered the pond.
The question then becomes, where to next?
To that we say, Ad Astra.
(“To the stars”)
Dave
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