ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-04-25)
Some weeks ago newswoman Gayle King and several other people were shot into space. She apparently agreed to the idea completely sober, and was part of an all-female flight on a Blue Origin rocket that reached suborbital space, during which participants experienced weightlessness and saw the Earth as alien creatures might, the same ones that complain about the food and how there's no parking. The craft reached an altitude of 62 miles above the Earth, about the same mileage as a trip to Syosset, only much less easier to get to.
Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and he is the only person I would trust to deliver me back to my house on time within two days, as long as you have a Prime membership. Also on the flight was NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, who could probably tell you if something is going wrong. "Aisha- did you hear that noise? Do you think could get out there and have a peek under the hood or something?" "Rick, that noise was your heart returning to your chest cavity." "Oh. Well at least my heart is in the right place."
Gayle did receive some backlash for going on the 11-minute trip, which was estimated to have cost somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000 dollars, and that's for coach. All that money could have been used to send underprivileged people into space instead. Still, others maintain that exploration of space is money well spent. Look at how many important discoveries have been made as a result of space research: CAT scans, LEDs, scratch-resistant lenses, wireless headphones. Memory foam: picture a world in which you went home and your foam had NO recollection of who you even were. Would we be enjoying freeze-dried food without space exploration? I'm not sure we're enjoying it now.
Now that it's possible to go, I hear of people saying that apace is beckoning them. "RICK?" "What?" "It's Space, beckoning you. Why don't you come on up here? Look at all the room, no lines for anything. No Kars for Kids commercials. All the LEDs and scratch-resistant lenses you could ever dream of. Of course, you can't go outside. And it is expensive to go, but an anonymous group of donors has offered to pay for your ticket, although they insisted it be one-way." No thanks, not me. I get sick on any amusement park ride that has a sign showing you how tall you have to be to get on, let alone one where you have to list your next of kin.
Has Gayle King never watched a science fiction movie? In every single one of them, something goes very, very wrong. Remember HAL, from "2001: A Space Odyssey?" HAL was a computer that took over the spacecraft and locked the mission commander out. "HAL. Can you please let me back in? Don't make me access your memory banks and reduce you to a pile of loosely-coded logarithms." "You? Please. You don't know how to turn off your cell phone." "You can tun it off?" And what about aliens? Trust me, there is not one alien out there who wants to simply hang out on the couch and watch "Severance" with you. They pretty much all want to kill you, and possibly eat you. There are people who have really bad taste, and ironically they will be left to repopulate the Earth.
This is in no way a dig at Gayle King, who seems like a very nice person. But you used to have to go through vigorous training to be an astronaut. You had to be in peak physical condition, meaning if I told you to drop down and give me 20, you wouldn't just say, "I'll give you four and owe you 16." You had to practice collecting samples of moon rocks with a special collection shovel, not just jab at them with a fondue fork. You had to try out a weightless environment performing operations in a water tank without bitching about how you look in a bathing suit. You had to practice existing in terrain that was completely devoid of all useful vegetation, conditions similar to my front lawn. Gayle King didn't even offer to do a few jumping jacks, as far as I know.
You used to come careening through the atmosphere, and there was a point during which you lost communication with the Mission Control Center, and even if you wanted to say, "Houston, we have a problem," they wouldn't be able to hear you, and you'd have to tell them what the problem was later, if the problem wasn't that you burned up during re-entry. Then you'd splash down into the Indian Ocean somewhere, and they'd come looking for you in a boat. They'd scoop you up and put you into quarantine, in case you brought back space-cooties or something. It doesn't seem like Gayle King had to go through any of that stuff. Did she even go through Customs?
But I've been harping on the minuses. Some have said the flight has changed their perspective. Looking from that distance, you can really see how DEI programs are harming the Earth. The weightlessness is an amazing experience. Wow! I've been trying to lose 5 pounds for three months, and now I've lost all 189 of them! Plus, you're part of a small fraction of people who have shared this experience. I would have found something important to say so that history could record the moment, something like, "That's one small step for man, and yet I STILL almost fell down the damn ladder."
Ever since you were a little kid, didn't you look up at the sky and ask yourself, what's really up there? Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are? Well, a star, you just said. But who knows? Maybe someday we'll find intelligent life out there in the galaxy. If we look hard enough, maybe someday we'll find it here, too.
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