The Future

Back before even the time when the internet was spelled with a capital I, there was little doubt in my mind that I'd grow up to control the launch of manned space-flight.

STS-116 mission patch. Image credit: so not me.

However, as some of you may be aware, things never quite go the way you plan them. The first Swede ever to venture past the thin life-enabling veil of the atmosphere - Christer Fuglesang - of all people should know that, having had the first launch attempt scrubbed on Thursday night. Not to mention training and waiting for 14 years just to be allowed to make the attempt in the first place. So yeah.

Me, I had some problems in the present as well. Turns out that I'd probably been overly optimistic regarding my ability to wake up, or rather mistimed my sleeping so that I was supposed to wake up while in the deepest possible sleep known to man. Or that I forgot to turn the alarm on after setting it, I'm not sure. Either way, it does suck like you would not believe. Thankfully, through something certainly bordering divine intervention, I awoke at 02:59 a.m., 12 minutes after the launch was supposed to have taken place. So I grab my pants (never mind a shirt or a sweater, there's no time, people!) and run out to the TV, turn it on, secretly hoping that they'd scrubbed the launch tonight as well so I'd get another chance later, what with the weather not being very promising tonight either. But it turns out that they did launch, and that I'd thus missed the "near-heart-stopping tension of the countdown" itself. Which, yeah, might be a good thing, since I generally prefer my heart to keep going. At least I was up and about when the first Swede ever entered orbit at 03:05, four minutes before "passing over Stockholm", something which I can only assume means he passed over my head in equal measure, at that altitude.

The launch of STS-116. Image credit: equally so not me.

I may have missed the launch itself, but man... There is no end to what can only be referred to as the gorgeousness of the situation. While the media people were busy showing pictures from the launch over and over again (for which I am grateful) and talking incessantly about the new type of yogurt they'd eat and how problematic it could be to eat bread and go to the bathroom in space (in nearly the same sentence!), they also briefly mentioned the American plan to build a permanent base on the moon, starting in the year 2020 and being permanently settled from 2024. Using experiences from there, Mars will be next, with an attempt to be made by 2030.

In my head, I realize that the above is more political hyperbole from a president who's stopped loving the idea of being "the war president" than it is actual plans, or at the very least that priorities shift over time, and political ones tend to do so quicker than most. But even if they do, what I had just witnessed was a small step on the way to one of the events I would most like to witness during my lifetime: the first human setting his or her foot on Mars. Preferably followed by setting his or her other foot on that same Mars, but that's not a deal-breaker for me personally. And yes, once more I realize it's all about priorities, and that the 16 billion dollars that keep NASA afloat every year could go a long way to easing the much more life-threatening problems of many in the world. But quite aside from all the other ways that cash could help the world or the various organisms living in it, I want them to keep going. Naturally, this has more to do with me being raised in a corner of the world where the biggest problem is getting an email on your cellphone while typing an answer to an earlier email on the same phone than some deep-seeded human desire to explore. Of this, there can be little doubt. Hell, my current main method of exploration isn't even a bike, it's walking. But the eight year old boy inside me refuses to listen. He doesn't care or even know all that much about what's going on on this planet, he's far too busy thinking about how unbelievably cool it would be to venture forth to the next one. Maybe that's why, somehow, that that something happens to me when reading what Robert Zubrin said when proposing the Mars Direct plan a few years back:

"...Someday millions of people will live on Mars. What language will they speak? What values and traditions will they cherish as they move from there to the solar system and beyond? When they look back on our time, will any of our other actions compare in importance with what we do now to bring their society into being? Today we have the opportunity to be the parents, the founders, the shapers of a new branch of the human family. By so doing, we will put our stamp on the future. It is a privilege beyond reckoning."

I promise you here on all that is holy, I won't oversleep for that one.