KIDS IN SPACE, PART ONE: FAMILY PLANNING

With so much being bantered around lately about planetary colonization, taking that phenomenon as a given already, it is appropriate to devote some attention to the much less discussed matter of raising families in a non-Earth environment.  After all, any successful colony requires families and children as long as human colonists are mortal -- and we have proven time and again here in the relatively safe confines of our home planet that we are nevertheless a very vulnerable species.

It is no fault of science fiction if the area of extraterrestrial family planning has been neglected by our more official space agencies, at least as far as they have chosen fit to divulge.  As early as Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac's fiction in the mid-seventeenth century, the topic was broached, be it in an unconventional way.  In Les Etats et empires de la lune, soon after the protagonist makes moonfall, he is at first caged by the Selenians with a Spanish traveler who arrived before him, in hopes that the two humans would mate and produce observable offspring for the moon beings to study.  Sex, after all, often involves plumage, and the distinctly different clothing styles of Spain and France led the Selenians to conclude that it also signified a case of sexual dimorphism.  Cyrano discreetly omits to mention if any intimacy developed between the two earthly males, a tease that conforms very well with his irreverent wit.  

It is a shame that after Cyrano, much early sci fi writing skips the issue of families in space.  Jules Verne's lunar travelers, for instance, parallel their contemporaries crisscrossing Africa by  maintaining a strictly masculine fellowship in their exploration.  Likewise, H. G. Welles underlines the fact that his book involves the first MEN in the Moon, though Hollywood saw fit to add a female aboard their antigravity craft to swell the audience for its film and please the female public with a very underplayed hint of romance in the bud.  Early television was not nearly as exclusively concerned with male adults.  An early serial, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, includes a precocious youngster named Bobby, who always emphasizes that he is perfectly adapted to space.  Another child, an infant, makes a brief appearance in one story loop: this is the child of the humanoid alien Bovarro and his wife, who dote on their young one as the hope for their own displaced race.  Curiously, Bobby himself, like many children of the 1950s screen world, does not have a family.  Described as the ward of Professor Newton, he might as well have sprung fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, never enjoying the company of others of his generation.  Though Rocky and his girlfriend Vena take on somewhat parental roles, without even being formally engaged, Bobby is perhaps both of product of the 50's and 60's theme of children without conventional families (Lassie, Father Knows Best, My Three Sons, etc.) and perhaps a precursor of sci fi films that produce children as in vitro or embryonic characters.  

Post-60s sci fi begins to investigate the necessity of kids in space.  Star Trek includes a number of episodes focussing on problems of children, often in stressful situations that usually involve some difficulty of adaptation.  Spock is perhaps the ultimate expression of this focus, since he is a human/Vulcan hybrid.  Yet the main source of his difficulties are social rather than strictly biological, since the circumstances of his birth are not really presented in detail.  Instead, he experiences troublesome rejection by fully Vulcan peers and even, in one instance, by his own father.  These are echoed in later series by the case of Worf, who also experiences wrenching issues of identification involving the competing factors of his purely Klingon biology and his upbringing by a Russian family after losing his birth parents in a war.  By the time Deep Space Nine comes on the scene, space kids become much more common, including Sisco's son Jake, Bashir's genetically modified childhood, Odo's clouded origins, the O'Briens' space-born child, Worf's son Alexander, Quark's offspring and others; so many, in fact, that the Enterprise and the space station both operate onboard nursery schools! With all this youthful presence one might expect a exhaustive treatment of the problematics of childhood in space, but other than briefly hinting at the various consequences of other-than-earthly upbringing in some peripheral characters like members of the maquis, many questions are left unanswered. 

Star Wars, by contrast, sidesteps many of the central issues of childhood in space by presenting characters like Luke and Anakin Skywalker, whose origins are shrouded in politically associated mystery but who notwithstanding seem to dominate their environments, due in no small part to the fact that they possess super midichlorian powers.  Diseases, birth defects, or bullies are, after all, no match for The Force.  The Apollonian atmosphere of Lucas's universe is, of course, not completely dominant in sci fi.  In later installments, we plan to concentrate more closely on some very different interpretations of children in space, especially in the universes of more dystopian authors such as Philip K. Dick.  Our next piece in this series will move on to the topic of conception in space, referring to some of the works mentioned here and others, as they stack up against what science may or may not tell us about producing future generations in space colonies.  Please follow our discussions.

The Mutara Nebula

Nebulae have always fascinated me.  Their ghostly presence, their spectacular glow, and their role as birthing places. and sometimes grave markers, for stars give them an appealing mystery that even solar systems cannot match.  The placement of one of the epic battles of the Star Trek universe, pitting James T. Kirk against the "superior intellect" of Khan, only enhances this impression in my mind. 

I have tried to determine if there is a known nebula that matches the Mutara, to no avail.  Yet the pictures of nebulae generated by the newest generation of space telescopes gives flight to the imagination, as more and more details jump out about these intriguing celestial bodies.  These sharper and sharper images may well reveal new secrets about their particles, composition, and origin.  Perhaps they will suggest to us new interpretations about the relaltion of distant nebulae to the origin of our own solar system and those in our vicinity, such as the Centauri systems.  

It's uncertain how soon, if ever, we may ever come to visiting our galaxy's nebulae up close.  Recently I met the husband of a relative who had spent his career working with NASA and its space flight systems.  Specifically, I wanted to ask him about information I had seen about the renewed interest in using atomic explosions to power future space flight from Earth to neighboring planets.  He confirmed to me that this technological dimension, first brought up in the 1950s, was back on the examining table for projected trips to Mars and beyond.  

The concept of using a big explosion or explosions to send a rocket into space is not, of course, totally new.  As early as the seventeenth century Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac has his travelers use a sort of rocket, made from fireworks destined for the midsummer festival of St. John, to reach the Moon, after their original evaporation-powered vehicle failed to make it further than Quebec. Two centuries later Jules Verne sends spatial explorers to our satellite in a projectile shot out of a giant post-Civil War cannon constructed near the site of today's Cape Canaveral, Florida.  While both of these futurists anticipated some details of the eventual missions that reached the lunar surface in the 1960s, each had its impractical tongue-in-cheek aspects that were fortunately not duplicated in real life.  As for the idea of using nuclear explosives to send astronauts far beyond Earth orbit by setting off a series of blasts that would be absorbed by some sort of cushion and turned into thrust for a launch vehicle containing human passengers, there are also some formidable engineering and biological obstacles to overcome.  Anyone who has visited World War II bunkers along the Atlantic Wall or the Siegfried Line can understand that even the shock of 155 mm howitzers or 15 inch naval ordinance can kill all the inhabitants of a structure even before it cracks into pieces.  And those shells are mere spitballs compared to nuclear explosions, or even the advanced bunker busters sowing terror around the world today.  Besides, solar radiation is already a concern for astronaut survival, much less the addition of deadly gamma rays produced in near proximity.  Whether we can "bomb our way" through our own solar system is hardly a given at this point.

In the absence of near-light or faster-than-light speed craft, the nebulae of our region of space seem to remain so many gleaming eyes and beckoning limbs inviting us into a realm beyond our reach.  However, the never ending quest of discovery will not be easily quenched as long as humans carry the instinct for curiosity.  Once we truly start to reach out to the universe for knowledge without expecting it to provide a quick fix for our earthbound piccadillos, we may at least be able to stare straight into those eyes and touch those limbs out in the depths of space time.

 

Don't Forget the Droids

The last couple of years have been very tumultuous, but not very productive, in more ways that one.  Thus, it is not surprising that the prospects for speculative fiction -- and science fiction in particular -- have become blurry at best.  Before the beginning of the second Trump presidency, America's race into space appeared to have revived, with bold plans to finally establish a moon colony in the next decade.  Much has changed since then, as NASA's budgets and plans have been continually modified in a less expansive direction and other initiatives have taken precedence of the importance of boots on the moon or Mars.

Setbacks in rocket hardware have turned back the clock on manned missions to outer space.  These have not been serious enough to cancel plans entirely for the goal of an eventual moon settlement, but they have certainly caused some delays and redirections of effort, to the point that it is difficult to see where the short term objectives of lunar settlement and the longer term hopes of Mars landings are clearly articulated.  The place of the International Space Station, projected for abandonment in the relatively near future, and an eventual successor station seem to change continually.  Such a patchwork planning schedule does not bode well for a well organized approach to interplanetary expansion.  Nor does the ongoing exclusion of China from NASA's timetables offer much of a boost to Earth's prospects for exploring the rest of the solar system in a systematic and financially responsible way.  

The muddled nature of Earth's defense priorities also present stumbling blocks to accessing the rest of the solar system.  Distrust among the planet's major powers prevents much cooperation, as resources are directed into competing programs involving secret types of spacecraft, communication systems, and possibly even space-based weaponry aimed at Earth-based targets instead of space-sourced challenges such as rogue meteors.  We are still too obsessed with blowing each other up, instead of dealing with existential threats to our planet and its civilizations, much less exploiting advantages beyond our own thin and increasingly threatened atmosphere.  

Contrast this to the marvelous and burgeoning achievements of our mechanical creations.  Man-made machines have registered unimagined success in outer space.  The Mars exploration devices we have sent to explore that planet have exceeded almost all expectations in their ability to furnish information about that world, outlasting their predicted timespans by large measure.  Incredibly, the "ancient" Voyager technology continues to function almost beyond the limits of believability in the depths of interstellar space.  Other probes have reawakened to further discover new things about the universe, as space telescopes have revealed thought-challenging pictures of wonders previously inaccessible to our senses.  

The success of our machines begs the question of whether we should reassess the role of our physical human bodies in the entire enterprise of interplanetary, and eventually interstellar, activity.  Films such as the extraordinary Interstellar invite us to keep us focussed on the Golden Age obsessions of humans in the cosmos that have prevailed since the time of classics like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Perhaps we need to concentrate more on getting along among our organic selves and relying to a greater extent on our droid extensions to solve outlying problems that lie more within their capabilities than our own.  The R2D2s and C3POs of our own future may hold the key to being more than just robotic sidekicks to our exploration of the universe.  There are ways that we have to learn to trust them, and also to distrust them at times, in order to profit from ongoing progress.  Droids, not drones, may be the repositories of our futures.

 

 The Mandalorian and Grogu

Finally got so see this much anticipated film.  The audience was surprisingly large for a movie nearing the end of its initial release.  Not expecting much from a story line that had left me rather cold, I was surprised both at how well the film stood up as a story and how well composed the visual product was.  A film where the major character only shows his face --reluctantly -- for a few seconds and where his buddy only speaks in slight whimpers does not seem to offer a lot to engage the spectator.  Yet, The Mandalorian and Grogu moves along extremely efficiently, perhaps because it mixes in just the right amount of detective noir and measured humor to modulate the fight scenes and military sci fi content.  There are tasteful tributes to the rest of the vase Star Wars canon, without the irritating leaning that typifies so many sequel efforts.  Nothing is permitted to steal the show or overpower the various elements, not even the presence of the Queen of Outer Space (not a Gabor, but THE Weaver) as the leader of the rebel/republican alliance.  One of the elements that pleased me most was the way the middle course of the movie, where the Mandalorian is near death and Grogu is forced togrow up quickly and save them both, shifts registers to a more emotive and thoughtful pace.  It is like a changing tempo in a symphony that still blends completely into the themes of the other movements.  Speaking of which, the music in this epic deserves special accolades, covering a range of cohesive themes that underline the sweeping confrontations in the John Williams tradition and also shift without jarring into the suspenseful or gentler parts of the plot.  The more I think of it, The Mandalorian and Grogu stands out for me as a more carefully crafted artwork than the other prequels and sequels, putting it in a class with Rogue One as a masterpiece that can be enjoyed on its own.

 EVER HEARD OF CSA?

No, not Confederate States of America!  It's Community Sustainable Agriculture and it's a way of putting our concern for the planet's future into action.  You make a contract with a farm or group of farms to provide you with a box of produce direct from them every so often.  This year, I decided to try this with our local asparagus farm because we love fresh asparagus spears and have been a little dissatisfied with the super market product.  So we paid about $300 for 10 weeks of boxes, plus a few pick-your-own events right in the fields.  We've now received our first five weeks of boxes, which contained superb asparagus, plus products from three associated farms: salad greens, zucchini squash (courgettes), sweet potatoes, berries, and LOTS of eggs, as well as some honey and blackberry jam.  There were so many eggs that I had to dig into my old quiche recipes and start freezing some of those, besides learning to pickle boiled eggs.  I realize that not everyone has a farm available to do this (here we have a choice of two) or the time to cook a lot of fresh products.  Yet I am very happy we did, because we are helping to preserve local farms that grow something besides corn, wheat and soybeans for Big Ag.  These family farms are an American tradition and a great way to get fresher, tastier, and less chemically-treated items for the diet.  All over the world, there is a need to encourage this sort of sustainable agriculture in order to restore the balance of nature and climate and to make a better world for coming generations.  I think you all should consider ways to consume local products raised by dependable local farms, both for your own personal benefit and that of the Earth.  (And yes, I did think of our own characters the Religious Dissenters on Domremy as I wrote this piece.)

 FELIZ PASCOA NEW VIEWERS FROM BRAZIL!

 

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APRIL 24-26   GLEN ALLEN, VIRGINIA

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