Little Conversations: Tainted Love.

These little conversations
Well for me they'll never do
Now what am I supposed to do with
Broken sentences of you?

Concrete Blonde, Little Conversations 

Retrograde childhood trauma is the WORST.

- Sid

"The arching sky is calling..."

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands! Stand by! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth

Any aspiring space explorers in the audience?  NASA is looking for astronauts - sadly, US citizens only, and out of over 12,000 applicants in 2020, only ten became astronaut candidates: odds of 1 in 1200 against you, even if it was a random selection. But you know, if you don't apply, the odds are zero.

- Sid

"A normal, routine flight".

It is difficult to think of a science fiction author who has had more of an impact on the real world than Sir Arthur C. Clarke. His early work with radar during WWII, his proposal of the geosynchronous communications satellite, his television appearances as a commentator, the movie adaptations of his work, and of course his countless stories, essays, novels and books, all combine to make him a cultural icon. 

 A large portion of Clarke's work occupies a sort of near-future niche: the Space Odyssey books, A Fall of Moondust, The Fountains of Paradise, The Hammer Of God, the Rama novels, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Earth. Clarke has never attempted to create a unified history of the future, as have authors like Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, or a host of other. However, the future as Clarke portrays it in those books demonstrates a logical, consistent, considered evaluation of how life in space might actually be lived.  

2001 is a perfect example of this: Heywood Floyd's trip to the Moon is, as it says in the narrative, "a normal, routine flight". That being said, let's look at Mr. Floyd's trip. 

He boards a booster-assisted spaceplane that takes him to Space Station One, where he transfers to a zero-g shuttle that takes him to the Moon. The boosters for the spaceplane are independent craft that fly back to Florida to be refueled and used again. 

Interestingly enough, in the course of the trip Floyd logs on with his Newspad and downloads a selection of current papers to read, clicking on thumbnail-sized images to select the pages he wants. Because Clarke is English, it is of course unlikely that Heywood would be looking at porn, but other than that it's pretty close to what most people do now with their laptops when they travel - not a bad guess for 1968. But I digress...

The craft used in 2001 are designed to occupy specific niches, and as such are completely different in their designs. The spaceplane is essentially the current Space Shuttle, but with better seating, stewardesses, and apparently less of a re-entry problem. The suggestion is that it's like an orbital 747, designed to operate for the most part within the atmosphere, but capable of limited vacuum operation. 

The zero-g shuttle is completely different. Other than the fact that it's laterally symmetrical (presumably for convenience of accelerating along its centre of gravity) it has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, because it will never feel the touch of air - it's purely a vacuum craft. And, like the spaceplane, it's a multi-use craft designed to perform the Earth-Moon circuit over and over again. 

The space station itself is a much more developed entity than the current ISS, although, like the ISS, it's a work in progress, as demonstrated by the bare skeleton that's visible. The station is rotating in order to use centrifugal force to create the illusion of gravity, cited in the novel as equal to the Moon's (1/6 of Earth's). As a sidebar, Clarke describes the lounge area of the station as having "a restaurant, post office...barber shop, drug store, movie theater, and a souvenir shop", making it sound pretty much like an airport concourse, as opposed to the movie version:

Any further comment would be superfluous. 

 In my previous posting, I cited some of the advantages of space stations, and I find it odd that the American space program has never made a serious effort to establish and maintain a permanent facility in orbit. I'm aware of the various difficulties involved in getting things up there, but on that basis shouldn't they be trying to make sure that everything that goes into near-Earth space stays there? 

 My younger readers - if there are any (readers, that is) - will not remember the Chicken Little experience of waiting to see where Skylab was going to impact when it lost orbital stability. Shouldn't it still be up there as part of the current Space Station, like building a home around the original log cabin? 

If I were in a position of authority at NASA, I'd be tempted to ignore the issues involved in manned missions to the Moon or Mars for some time, and just concentrate on developing an infrastructure based around three space stations: Earth, Moon, and Mars. I'd then establish a repeatable, reusable and reliable system of travel between the stations - in other words, a normal, routine flight.

- Sid