I'd give just everything, she's got me so mesmerized

[sovay]

I have nothing to say about the moon landing from memory; I wasn't born. I watched shuttle launches on television as a child. I had a subscription to Odyssey. (I never won any of their contests, but I did once have a question answered by the robot mascot: I wanted to know why a hypothetical tenth planet of our solar system was always referred to as "Planet X.") I counted down inside the model of the Apollo command module at the science museum. I had clipped out of a newspaper and taped to the wall beside my bed a list of qualifications for the American space program of the 1980's. I built a radio telescope in high school, but I did not go into space.

I don't know if the future I took for granted in my childhood would ever have worked: space stations, moon habitats, Mars colonies. Certainly I hate the way it's framed nowadays by private spaceflight tech bros who seem to feel that there's no need to take care of Earth if a tiny, restricted, super-wealthy we can just jet-set to Mars and trash it similarly. Increasingly it seems to be difficult to separate our species healthily from the biosphere within which it evolved. Manifest destiny in space is as harmful and stupid as manifest destiny anywhere else.

I still think it's wonderful that there were humans on the moon. I hope it will be possible, not under the auspices of the present administration and its narrow definition of humanity, to have humans there again. Even if I'm not one of them; what does that matter? My niece who likes glitter and car parts might also like the stars.

Comments

[labingi]

I don't know if the future I took for granted in my childhood would ever have worked: space stations, moon habitats, Mars colonies. Certainly I hate the way it's framed nowadays by private spaceflight tech bros who seem to feel that there's no need to take care of Earth if a tiny, restricted, super-wealthy we can just jet-set to Mars and trash it similarly. Increasingly it seems to be difficult to separate our species healthily from the biosphere within which it evolved. Manifest destiny in space is as harmful and stupid as manifest destiny anywhere else.

Well said. Based on the rec of a friend (who well-meaningly trashed my own writing for having classic M-class planet-like terraforming), I've recently read Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, and its discussion of space colonization was revelatory for me. My own SF universe still has bazillions of (well about 400) terraformed planets/moons, but I'm really trying to reframe how I write about them to be more explicit about how tenuous Earth-based life will be on them and how they were multi-thousand-year project.

[sovay]

My own SF universe still has bazillions of (well about 400) terraformed planets/moons, but I'm really trying to reframe how I write about them to be more explicit about how tenuous Earth-based life will be on them and how they were multi-thousand-year project.

That sounds both narratively responsible and fun to read.