Seven Sons

On Saturday October 23, 2010 the International Space Station will have been continuously occupied for 3,645 days, breaking a record previously set aboard the Russian Mir space station. Humans will be able to claim a continuous presence off the surface of the planet for almost 10 years, and children born during that time may be the first generation not universally confined to the surface of our home planet.

Around the world nations are struggling to make difficult choices as their economies contract, and it would irresponsible to ignore the (pun intended) astronomically high cost of the space program when prioritizing budget line items. The space program does not deliver many obvious and immediate benefits beyond some stellar (there I go again) wall paper for your computer desktop. But I would argue that as we weigh the resources that we put into various efforts as a nation and as the steward species of the Earth, the space program should be grouped with investments in education, transportation and communications infrastructure as “weightless” on the balance.

While we humans have a penchant for quick fixes, instant gratification and impulsive decisions, we have proven for millennia  that we also have the unique ability among animal species to plan ahead, work together on a massive scale and lay the groundwork for future generations to survive and prosper. While space exploration and experimentation are still very expensive, our progeny three or four generations from now will not regret the resources spent on the hundreds of small things we are learning about living off-planet as they look out into the solar system for the raw material and real estate to thrive. Here is a small and very incomplete list of things we can only learn by continuing to support the manned exploration of space:

• long-term physical conditioning in micro gravity
• The psychological effects of long-term isolation
• nutrition in space
• re-acclimatization to the Earth after a long time away from it
• methods and protocols for communicating with the ground
• shuttle socking protocols, safety, methods, waste management
• power management
• the logistics of rotating crews and supplies from the Earth
• space debris monitoring and avoidance

For an even better discussion of human space flight by people who actually know what they are talking about, see this Freakonomics article.

I have a weakness for over-thinking things. Here are some recent words or word-related ideas that have been killing my mental productivity lately.

1) I was in a meeting and a guy was talking about his family, and he said, “…we have a good, and I hate this word, but, relationship…” I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant. But who the hell has a problem with the word relationship? I have been trying to figure that one out, and haven’t made any headway. It is almost like he said he didn’t like the concept of water, but he would go ahead and drink it.

2) When some people talk about someone who has died, especially a loved one, they often use the word “passed.” As in, “He was 99 when he passed.” That usage has always sounded really awkward to me – am I alone in this? First of all, I feel like there needs to be an object at the end of the phrase – what did he pass? And that line of thinking always ends in the gutter. Also, the imagery of “passing,” whether it is passing away or passing into some other dimension or plane of heaven seems unreal somehow, and my opinion on this predates my atheism. I tend to always used the word “died” when talking of the event of someone’s death, though social protocol often requires the use of “passed away” some times, like when talking to an elderly widow about her spouse. I haven’t figured that part out either.

3) This is about more than a word, but a concept. I occasionally hear people complain about how things are so much worse than they used to be – and in a bad economy the atmosphere is ripe for these kind of exclamations. “People don’t talk to each other anymore,” or “kids these days spend too much time indoors,” or “life was better when…” When I hear someone start to complain about the dearth of modern decency or extol the virtues of a previous generation, I immediately assume that what they are saying is demonstrably false, then start working on how best to prove it. I think I finally have a formula for this, as presented by Jessica Valenti in an article in The Nation. The entire article is fantastic, but the part that struck me was this: In talking about the modern mantle of feminism and as a young activist herself, Valenti observes that

…we fail to push forward and support new feminists of our own. This is not to say that younger women aren’t at the forefront of the movement—they certainly are. But their work is often made invisible by an older generation of feminists who prefer to believe young women are apathetic rather than admitting their movement is shifting into something they don’t recognize and can’t control.

Valenti goes on to give a perfect example of this self-sabotage at work. But this insight can be generalized to most people who decry the way things are done today and evoke the past as better, if not perfect. It is not just that they are nostalgic, or don’t understand the issue; but they have built up some cognitive barrier that prevents them from making even the most shallow of investigations into the truth of what they are saying. Now I need a good quick phrase I can drop into the conversation at the right moment; something like “just because it is different doesn’t mean it is bad.” But a phrase with more punch than that. Any suggestions?