NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose,
CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
After JFK sent the
United States on a gentle landing (as opposed to a “collision”) course to the
Moon, it seems that Democrats turned from the stars to focus on Earth…
Even today, budget
battles in Congress have focused on moving into space or more closely monitoring
Earth (for Climate Change and Near Earth Asteroids that might collide with the
planet and change all life as we know it (see Mary Robinette Kowal’s novels THE
CALCULATING STARS, THE FATED SKIES, to be followed by THE RELENTLESS MOON (2020),
and the conclusion of the quartet with THE DERIVATIVE BASE in 2022.) The focus
has been essentially along party lines, with Democrats seeking to strengthen the
knowledge base of our own world, and Republicans eschewing Earth for our place
in space.
Private industry
is maniacally developing launch vehicles, with one currently making test trips
up and down and which will very soon be added to Russian Soyuz capsule as the only
vehicle able to carry Human crew and passengers; of course all of this is with
a close eye on enlarging their cash cards. Other nations, once content to
either ride in the wake of space giants Russia, the United States, and China;
are now racing on ahead – with dozens of countries claiming a space program(seventy-two
of them), but only fourteen of those with a serious launch capability.
Six have the
capability of launching AND RECOVERING biological material; and finally only
three have sent astronauts from their own space program into space – Russia
(first, April 1961), the US (second, May 1961), and China (third, October
2003).
The International
Space Station has been occupied without interruption since November 2, 2000 (currently,
18 years and 343 days) with a total number of visiting scientists of 236,
coming from eighteen countries.
Humans have a
presence in space – near space, anyway. We’ve landed on the Moon 21 times,
starting in 1959 with the Soviet Luna 2 in 1959, to the most recent landing by
China’s Chang’e 4 less than a year ago (at this writing; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/interactive-map-shows-all-21-successful-moon-landings-180972687/).
Spacecraft have landed on Mars eight times (all US ships) and Venus six times
(all of them Soviet Union ships) and Magellan took extensive radar images that
were processed into 3D images. Humans have also shot probes through the atmospheres
of Venus (once). NASA/ESA and Italy had Cassini drop a probe into the atmosphere
of Titan eventually crashing into its atmosphere while gathering data. The
Galileo probe went to Jupiter.
So – why am I here?
To say that I’m
irritated that Democrats seem fixed on Trump’s idiot statements about AGW and insist
on directing NASA to send up more satellites to take more pictures of Earth and
add more data to something that while people DENY it, has a relatively high
probability of being a real trend; those Democrats are totally ignoring the
spin the current president has put on NASA’s return to the Moon and mounting a
mission to Mars (mostly because it’s flashy and I think he wants to be
mentioned in the same space-breath as JFK…)
Check the articles
below if you think I’m being an idiot. They’re (mostly) non-partisan (the one
partisan piece does the same thing current Democrats are doing: dancing around
a revitalized humans-in-space program that Trump’s Tweets have re-initiated).
So, what’s this
have to do with writing?
Americans are not
only oblivious to but actively ignoring the efforts of the rest of the planet
to get into space. In the upcoming issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, I
have a short story, “Kamsahamnida, America” in
which South Koreans land a woman on the far side of the Moon using a bit of gravity
modification technology.
The concept is NOT
a mere SF idea however. During a month-long stay in RoK, I saw firsthand, the South
Korean’s American-like obsession with space. From science museum images of
Korean astronauts on the Moon and Mars, to the attitude of people regarding what
Americans would consider “cramped living quarters” and the reverse paradigm of the
US and its European roots that “wide-open-spaces” and single-family-homes is
the only sure sign of success and the Korean paradigm that the poor have “houses”
and the rich have apartments that OTHER people take care of so they can do
IMPORTANT work. Also, the Korean space program, while it hasn’t landed a person
anywhere yet, was independently developed in a way reminiscent of the American
space program of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and started
with sounding rockets and have gradually scaled up to full-sized rockets
capable of launching satellites and (I’m sure) eventually crewed spacecraft…to
the fact that in the center of the peninsula, you’ll find the National Fusion
Research Institute…(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DA8GnrhTCY;
http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=29116)
South Koreans are actively experimenting with rockets, fusion power, and
countless other technology applications of physics.
I believe that
South Korea will not only one day stun the world by skipping over the “big”
nations to make a conceptual advance that all of them expected to be the sole
province of Western White Big Country Big Budget Science…That’s what I explore
in the story in the November/December ANALOG.
I think they’re
poised at the edge of a leap into space; and , “Kamsahamnida, America”
is the first in a set of stories that will be set in the same universe. It’s
also a universe that sees the achievement of a Korean dream: to reunite the
peninsula.
Articles: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5503/cosponsors,
https://spacenews.com/nasa-and-spacex-agree-commercial-crew-development-is-the-highest-priority/,
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/where-candidates-stand-nasa-space-exploration-n637771,
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/midterm-election-congress-nasa-space/575320/,
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-1c5f68682303ae92a6aed0b75bfcaf6f,
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2019/nasas-planetary-defense-budget-growth.html,
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2019/what-the-recent-budget-deal-means-for-nasa.html,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_United_States#Kennedy_administration,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_space_agencies
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