Robert Muir
  • News
  • About THE DIVE
    • Blog
    • Buy the Book
  • About Robert
  • The Scene
  • Media/Reviews
  • Contact

There's no place like home

11/6/2015

 
​The election is over and one former leader was last seen quietly slipping out the back door of parliament while another has gone to ground, so we can perhaps train our eyes to things farther afield or even skyward briefly.
 
During 'the sixties’ that were my formative years Star Trek was new and NASA wasn’t much older. Many things were changing and the atmosphere was positive especially in Canada where the cold war, Vietnam, racism, civil rights and all the other social issues of the time had less impact than they did south of the border. Space was the final frontier, at least for those like me. No one cared if the space race was just a big PR contest between the superpowers or that all those early manned rockets were really repurposed nuclear missiles. There was optimism in the air and anything seemed possible.  I was swept along by all the hype just like lots of others and when the moon landing took place I was perfectly ready to believe the ‘authorities’ when they said that we’d be living on the moon soon. A manned mission to Mars was expected to take place in 1983  after that!
 
Now it’s late 2015 and talk of manned space exploration is usually reserved for American state of the union addresses where it’s purpose is to convince audiences that America is still number one. So when I heard in the media that NASA had a major announcement pending about its Mars MAVEN project I thought it would merely amount to one of those noncommittal press releases. You know the ones about finding some new evidence indicating life on Mars, or not, but maybe, but don’t quote us because it’s all speculation so far. As it turns out this one might be more than that.  It might even lead to some serious thought.
 
The upshot of the announcement was that the solar wind is blowing away Mars’ atmosphere and has been doing so continually for millions of years because Mars hasn’t the protection of a magnetic field.  If that is true, it will put the kibosh on any plans for terraforming and\or colonizing  the red planet because any new atmosphere would be stripped away too. That leaves only the moon within reach, which has no atmosphere either.
 
The human race has often been responsible for parasitically occupying one place until they’ve drained its resources, polluted and generally laid waste to it. Then, leaving the mess behind they repeat the process in another pristine place.  It’s the nature of the species.
 
In the fermentation of alcoholic beverages, the process stops when the alcohol produced by the yeast itself reaches so toxic a level that the yeast cannot survive.  Likewise, we may have to stop shitting in our own nest and start looking after it instead,  because it is the only one we’re likely to have. Someone may yet come up with those unlikely or magical warp engines that Sci-Fi enthusiasts dream about, but more likely the ‘powers that be’ have made warp drives and the problems of interstellar distances  sufficiently challenging  keep kids like us in our own back yard indefinitely, for the well-being of ourselves and others in the cosmos.  

Comments are closed.

    Blog

    This is the blog of author Robert Muir.

    Archives

    January 2021
    September 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.