Cognitive Dissonance, or WTF?

 

Okay, you've got me on this one. It's definitely Patrick Stewart, and it's definitely the Enterprise. If anyone finds any sort of explanation of this, please do let me know what the hell was going on.

- Sid

No, the giant goose at Wawa doesn't count.

During one of my early drafts for my posting on Canada in science fiction and fantasy, I was hunting around for suitable images with which to illustrate the article. To my intense disappointment, I couldn't find a single image that showed a real science fiction view of anything Canadian.

Undaunted, I decided to take another direction on the search - how about monster movies? Sorry, no luck. Godzilla has never breathed radioactive fire on Vancouver, King Kong never made it this far north, the Cloverfield monster was restricted to New York - I finally had to photocomp my own picture, as above (and ended up not using it anyway). I know that we have a reputation as a peaceful country, but damn it, has not one other person ever wondered what it would look like if Mothra decided to attack Sudbury?

To add insult to injury, it turns out that the Japanese aren't content to have had every giant lizard, insect, primate and robot on the planet visit Tokyo. No, that's not enough - in honour of the 30th anniversary of the Mobile Suit Gundam cartoon series, they decided to build a 1:1 scale model of the star of the show. The 60-foot robot now towers over onlookers in the Odaiba Shiokaze park. The head turns, and the eyes light up, but unfortunately that's as mobile as the statue gets.

To be honest, I have to think that there must have been something more important than giant combat mecha on the list of civic projects for Tokyo. But you've got to think that if it had been built earlier, it would have made those Independence Day aliens think twice before blowing up the Imperial Palace.

- Sid

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

At the time, I didn't really care about the Apollo 11 moon landing.

In my defense, it was 40 years ago, and I was seven. As a result, the real significance of the event was lost on me, but I do remember sitting on the floor in the living room and watching the coverage of the landing - it must have been on CBC, we didn't get any American channels. I feel a bit sad now that my recollection of the events isn't clearer. After all, from the perspective of 2009, the moon landing may well be the most significant historical moment of the 20th Century. In the immortal words of Neil Armstrong: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Or was it?

It's difficult to say if the moon landing or the first manned orbital mission should hold precedence here, but I'm going to stick with the moon landing. After all, "space" is a relative concept, and it's difficult to say exactly where it begins, whereas landing on the moon has a nice, definitive feel. That being the case, by the standards of the science fiction community landing on the moon should have been just the first step, rather than a giant leap.

It's not hard to run an alternate reality scenario here. Let's say JFK doesn't get assassinated, and in his next couple of terms manages to promote the exploration of the Moon as a crucial element of the fight against Communism. The Apollo missions following 11 aren't just imitations of the first landing, but instead begin to enlarge the American presence (given the photo I used to start this posting, I hesitate to say "footprint"). Four missions later and there's a permanent base - small, but it's there. By now there would be a constantly changing population of several hundred on the Moon, and there could easily be a manned mission in orbit around Mars, preparing to launch the Ares Lander.

Now obviously, that's not what happened, and it's somewhat tragic that the initial success of the lunar missions has gone to waste. Would a different president in the early 70's have changed anything? It's impossible to say, but it does raise the question of what a different president will mean now.

I suspect that Obama will ignore the exploration of space in favour of addressing a myriad of more pressing domestic problems - charity beginning at home, as it were. Admittedly, there's talk that the American space program may once again look at the Moon as a precursor to a landing on Mars. There's talk of a permanent base on the Moon, but there's also talk that a Moon base is irrelevant - if it's possible to build a base on the Moon, why not go directly to Mars, or possibly Deimos or Phobos? Sadly, I suspect that all this talk is just that: talk.

There are two sides to the whole discussion of space exploration. On one hand, it doesn't really matter. I won't argue the various benefits and developments that have resulted from the space program, because the man on the street probably just doesn't care. I suspect that it wouldn't take a lot of public opinion to tip the balance so that the United States government just folded up NASA and shuffled the money into health care, something with an observable benefit.

On the other hand, wouldn't a revived space program be a better national focus for the United States than the battle against terrorism? (And yes, it pretty much has to be the United States, I don't see anyone else being in a position to undertake the project.) I'm not going to suggest that they can ignore the terrorism issue, but the last eight years have made substantial changes in the mindset of the USA, and not for the better. A renewed space program might give the country a sense of pride and accomplishment that's been sadly absent for quite some time.

In the final analysis, or, as per my oft-used reference from the three-armed aliens in The Mote In God's Eye, on the gripping hand, all we can do is wait and see...

- Sid