"Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars." Or so goes
that old tune that was popular back when your parents were young, with
embarrassing skin problems and baggy clothes of their own.
Back in those
steam-powered days of yore, the notion of a celestial getaway was a romantic ideal.
It remains so today. Perhaps more so now that creeping franchise fungus has
turned even the most exotic destination into a blur of Gap Kids and Barnes &
Noble superstores.
As the world gets more densely packed with drive-up donut shops, the desire
to really get away from it all is increasing exponentially. And now that
Crisis in the White House has gone the way of OJ and the Case of the
Mysterious Shrinking Glove, the timing is right for a long weekend on
Saturn. Let's face it, the party is over on this orbiting rock. Until
the next scandal hits - an exposé of Clinton's "youthful indiscretion"
with a Bulgarian Circus Troupe, perhaps - all that's left is the
post-impeachment hangover. Let Geraldo Rivera fluff the pillows and rinse
out the returnables. I'm putting on my zero-gravity traveling shoes.
Alas, the prospect of collecting intergalactic frequent flier miles seemed
closer thirty years ago when Neil Armstrong was bouncing around on the moon
than it does today. Of course that was the late 60's, when "modern" was the
societal mantra. The new nearly-21st century model is more retro-fixated,
practical and beige. And not only are we not rocketing to the Dwarf Nebula,
we're lacking other futuristic delights. It's almost 2001! Where are the
unisex jumpsuits, moving sidewalks and servo-robots that look like Julie
Newmar?
For people of my generation (everyone who experienced The Brady Bunch the
first time around and sees no reason to go through it again), the dream of
personalized space travel was never far away. Only the context changed. When
I was a fresh-faced lad in grade school, the space program was a way to get
out of math class. Whenever there was a launch, the teacher would wheel out
the Zenith, and for one brief moment my classmates and I were lifted out of
our algebraic mire into a brave new world. Then we went back to eating
Play-Doh.
As a sensibly medicated teenager with a belt buckle that doubled as an
incense burner, the space program was controversial and I joined the debate.
The argument was between the crewcut crowd (a.k.a. "The Man"), thrilled by
the deafening neatness of blasting big expensive things into the heavens,
and the fringe-festooned counter-culture (Yippie!) who believed the money
could be better spent improving the human condition through increased
funding of free verse poetry and wah-wah guitar solos.
Now that I've reached statistical maturity, no one seems to care. The line
between news and entertainment has become so thin that most humans are
unwilling to put up with any reality that doesn't feature Ben Affleck.
Meanwhile, the space program has been reduced to a never-ending episode
of This Old Space Station, in which Yuri floats around the cabin in a
pair of silver overalls looking for the wrench. Where is the excitement?
Where is the sense of discovery? Where are the cool moon buggies?
The Russians at least seem to be trying. They came up the idea for the
SUN MIRROR - a sun-reflecting gadget that was to provide warmth and
sunlight for sun-starved northern cities. (They were thinking of scenic
Smolensk, but Worcester can't be too far down the list.) Unfortunately,
the SUN MIRROR turned out to be a dud and they've gone back to trying to
get the MIR toaster to brown properly.
All NASA has done lately is send John Glenn back into orbit to test the
effect of weightlessness on denture adhesive and black support hose.
It's distressing, but I haven't given up. In fact, I've come up with a
simple way to increase public interest and the all-important bucks for
new big budget space adventures: Send annoying celebrities into space
against their will and charge people to watch it on television. Tell me
you wouldn't drop twenty bucks on a continuous feed of Richard Simmons
and Bill Gates as they make their way to the red planet . . .
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