The future
Like a great many of the 1970s born generation I grew up with a diet of televisual entertainment ranging from Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who and Star Cops.

In the early 1980s, the memory of sending men to walk on the moon was still fresh in our minds, one had even played a round of golf there. We'd built supersonic airliners to ferry you to New York so that you could technically arrive before you left, we had a fleet of spacecraft the size of an Airbus which could be used 100x over and land like a plane. How cool is that?

Avidly reading things like 2001 the works of Niven and Pournelle, DC Fontana and of course more Arthur C Clarke, it seemed a fair bet that we'd be colonizing the moon and mining for stuff in space in no time. City sized space stations rotating gracefully in the sky? You betcha. It all looked so easy, all it needed was investment and volunteers.

How lucky I was to be growing up in such exciting times. Could I ever have a piece of that action?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(wavy lines and the sound of a Tardis/gunshot/screeching tyres etc as PJM wakes up in the brave new world of 2008)

So now I'm sat at my desk wondering where the hell my shiny silver space suit is. It now takes nine hours sat behind a colicky baby to fly to New York on a Boeing 747, not some flashy Buck Rogers inspired Airliner made of unobtainium with a pool table in it somewhere.

The Space Shuttle is about to be pensioned off to make way for
this:

What the cocking fuck? It's just a metal cone with seats in it, almost exactly the same as what took men to the moon forty twatting years ago. Imaginative? Arse.

This is it, somewhere between 1979 and 2008 the human imagination has died a silent death. Risk taking and pioneering spirit have been buried under reams and reams of 'Ealf an Safety forms.

Can you imagine a British astronaut stepping on the moon? Think of the Risk Assessments, Insurance Forms, Job Descriptions and two-day-walking-in-low-gravity courses costing the taxpayer more than rockets alone.

Meanwhile, the news is full of dire warnings about global warming, resource deficiencies, Peak Oil and special offers for Nokia telephones which play shit R&B music.

Can you imagine what Captain Kirk would make of that?

Kirk, Spock and some unfortunate red shirted bloke who's about to be gruesomely killed somehow are on the planet Vega XV.

Kirk is busily working his pause peppered charm. On. A. Blonde eyed, blue haired alien bird with green skin who hasn't noticed his appalling wig.

"Ensign Phaserfodder, don't stray too far from the landing party. You haven't completed the 'Vega XV Risk Assessment Policy document yet"

-sound of Girls Aloud tinnily squealing in back pocket-

"That ringtone is highly illogical and shit captain."

"Men!" (kerslap) Blonde eyed, blue haired (in a beehive of course) woman skulks off set as Wig exits stage at speed in opposite direction

Meanwhile, flying cars are off the menu still, indeed according to Al Gore I'm told that my standard of living is going to decrease in the next fifty years, so I'm more likely to end up with an oxcart.

Where the fuck is my "Mr Fusion" device like in Back to the Future, which runs on discarded coke cans and banana skins?

We've taken the easy option and stuck with oil and gas for the last thirty years instead of setting a little aside for investment in alternatives like fusion power.

Instead of trying to change society for the better, we're cowed by it to the point where imagination and an intrepid spirit counts for shit. Instead of using their imagination exploring far off worlds, children seldom venture further than a quarter mile from their home. Meanwhile, once exotic destinations have become anodyne, tamed somehow and mundane. There is no final frontier except mortgages, flat screen televisions and Playstation 3s which will soon end up on a landfill somewhere as a sad epitaph to the electronic age when a) oil runs out or b) something better comes along to enslave our imagination.

Not the future I had in mind somehow...
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:20, 10 replies)

'In the ealry 1980s we had sent men to walk on the moon, one had even played a round of golf there.'
Did they go back again in the 80s then?
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:26, closed)

I couldnt agree more.
*clicks*. Youre absolutely right. Especially about the space stuff. I mean what has happened with exploration of space? I'd have thought it would be humanities biggest objective. Considering, if humanity is to survive, then we need to populate other worlds. All our eggs are in one basket as it is. One stray asteroid and boom. The Iraq war wont matter anymore because there would be nothing left of Iraq.. And the U.S.
(Miggyman, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:27, closed)

G'ah!
That didn't read exactly how I envisaged...

Must remember the chickenlady advice of re-reading my post before I click erm, post.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:29, closed)

we'll never get anywhere in space
until we have got rid of internal conflict (never going to happen)

or there is a sudden big drive to do it, arms-race-style. don't relish that myself.

I'll settle for clean inexpensive energy thanks. I'm hopeful about fusion, but until then we should be digging up wales to get at the coal.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:37, closed)

*click!*
Couldn't agree more with your entire post! The world seems to be intent on rushing backwards...
(FiatPanda, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 12:01, closed)

you want wizzo science and technology?
... pay more tax, fund more scientists and research engineers. Go on. Being taxed more is lovely and easy to sell to the electrorate.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 12:22, closed)

Not more taxes, but better use of taxes...
The NHS computer system is £2bn overspent, or think of it as two and a bit Aircraft Carriers.

The Tax Credits system costs the country £4bn because of the lack of joined up databases between HMRC, CSA and Tax Credits departments.

That's another four Nimitz class Aircraft Carriers.

Then there's ID Cards, which no-one wants.

Five more USS Nimitz class carriers in the River Thames.

To interrupt a post about aspirations and ambitions with some politics, the sheer wastefulness of UK government is mind-boggling.

The cost of the prototype Fusion reactor being planned for France is $9.1bn. This is being met by France, Germany, Japan and the USA, why aren't we investing instead of spunking ££££s on over-subsidized wind farms which will simply make electricity so expensive to generate it'll only be affordable by the wealthy?
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 27 Jun 2008, 12:37, closed)

21st. Century Apollo
I couldn't agree more. The excuse that NASA came out with was "well, we saved money on R&D by re-using all the research done on Apollo".

Doesn't it look like it!

If I was a 'merkin I'd be disgusted that the US manned space program has eaten billions of dollars to do nothing more than a 40-year-long, liquid fuelled version of a small dog chasing it's tail.

Alternatively, if I was the Chinese government I'd turn most of my nukes over to the space program and get a *decent* ship built; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 ).

By the time NASA have finished having meetings on how an American is actually going to get to Mars, China will have put up clothing factories there. I don't think China would be too worried about the environmental cost of a nuclear takeoff either, which would scare me shitless.

Random memory moment - wasn't there an Arthur C. Clarke story (either Rama or 2001 trilogies) where China had put up into orbit a space station that actually turned out to be a fast interplanetary ship?
(Naughtius Maximus Stuck on the blog, desperate to log out., Fri 27 Jun 2008, 16:05, closed)

Yes,
It was 2010 and the ship was called Tsien. It ended up meeting a grizzly end on the surface of Europa.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 27 Jun 2008, 16:12, closed)

But
the iPhone is very shiny indeed.
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 22:12, closed)