Space (1)

Good Evening.
I want to keep this third of many mpost brief on account o the time right now (1am Japan time!), so here I go.:

After watching Valkyrie, the excellent Bryan Singer movie with my girlfriend, and then watching a clip from John F. Kennedy's "Why we choose to go to the moon speech" (Sept. 12, 1962) on Youtube, I feel compelled to write this right now.

I have in fact much to say on the topic of space travel, and I can hopefully share it with you in time soon to come.
For now:

Have you noticed in our modern age that all things of note and worth are ultimately assigned a value in monetary terms? Put more simply: The almighty dollar has been given a great amount of interest, no doubt about it, but it's influence has, I do believe, invaded areas of life and existence that it should not have.

Going off Kennedy's speech AND the Valkyrie thing, I ask this question: What is done these days, in the areas of science, technology, research, publishing, and even education - what is done purely for the purpose of advancing humanity? ...for the purpose of making the world a better place.
I understand the place of entrepreneurship (despite how long it takes to TYPE that damn word!) in our world, and I understand that in the more modern stages of history it has served quite actively as a tool of advancement, but by its very nature and indeed by its very definition, its end result is little more than to make another buck!

The most glaring example I have to give you now at this late hour is that of the electric car.
Allegedly created in a more of less perfect form almost 20 years ago now, the electric car - a thing that would provide INCREDIBLE freedom to human beings, help the environment, and certainly make MY life a whole helluva lot easier and better was killed in its cot for sake of the oil industry preserving its ability to print money.
It was canned because - HOW can we possibly make money off a car that never has to refill, and could be recharged overnight for a fraction of a household's energy bills?
I will not ignore the uncomfortable fact that had the electric car toppled oil-dom overnight entire economies would have gone crashing down. But I will also NOT ignore the fact that this particular topic requires a very substantial debate, one which I intend to weigh in on in the near future.
AND I will NOT ignore the other fact that the oil industry has, at least for the last decade, and quite easily (though arguably) longer, been a cancer on the economies of the developed world. Once again, this deserves more debate, but I want to point out right here and now that the overwhelming majority of oil-producing nations are non-democratic, are despotic or dictatorial regimes, hate the free nations of the West, but also depend on them at the same time. (take Venezuela these days: Hugo "the Hutt" Chavez spits fire and horse-shit at America, never satisfied, even with Obama!, while simultaneously quietly begging America to continue digging and buying the oil secreting from his country's greasy, pageant-crazy pores. )

But back on topic here again for tonight,
the Kennedy speech of Sept. 12, 1962 does make mention of creating new industries and jobs. I have not problem with that. But to me, as I watched it back in July on the 20th Anniversary of the Moon Landing (yes kids, we DID land on that circle in the sky.... but not for looooong while now.... sadly (and to the detriment of human advancement)) I saw and heard a JFK talking about spending shitload of money (especially in 1962 terms!) on what was essentially a trip into the unknown with no economically realistic prospect of successful return.
But the prospect of return on the front of advancement, the front of art and science and KNOWLEDGE was to be limitless. And it WAS! For heaven's sake, we, the humans, the almost hairless apes trotting around here on Earth, went to the MOON! Do you see no victory in that?!?

I know there are people in this world who exist and say that we should not waste the time or energy to go to the moon, or go to Mars, or really do anything like that. These are the same people I'd like to ask to keep their heads buried in the sand, and try not to struggle or move when the tide comes in and ends their dark, colourless little existences.

Of course, we can never know if Kennedy was trying to make a buck, or if that most noble pursuit, the pursuit of KNOWLEDGE, was his ultimate guiding beacon for the speech and the birth of the Apollo program. It was either some twisted conspiracist/s, or some freakishly lucky whacko back in 1963 who ended MY chances of ever asking him what he was thinking and feeling.
There is of course the Cold War angle. Many politically-interested people (of all levels of involvement in the art and science of it) are happy to say that Kennedy was driven by the competitive nature of the Cold War and gettin' one on the Ruskies... and then just stop their arguments there.
Personally, I DON'T think that Kennedy got where he was, did what he did, and became what he became by nursing such a childish mentality as this particular assertion suggests.
But I will admit that the Cold War space race was a powerful motivator. And what of it? So what? I see, in this particular instance, that there was no harm really done (in terms of the human race, or the national well-being of the USA, or the world for that matter). If the Cold War was an agitator to get things like this done, then so be it! My readers, you must inderstand that the Cold War was not all bad, and there are MANY things to be thankful of the tides of history for. If you cannot agree with me, I believe there is still plenty of space on the slowly flooding beach with the other donor-organ depositories!


And then, to bring this home for tonight, there is the Valkyrie thing. Yes, I understand that it is a movie, crafted (quite well!) with at least some degree of poetic license; but I myself had read the tru history, and know that the basic facts are the same in movie and truth. And it is upon this that I base my assertion that yes!, there must have been someone involved in the July Plot of 1944 who had the intention of offing Hitler for sake of saving their beloved Germany from country-pimping ways of the Nazi party, and the infernal ravages of Hitler's utterly disastrous warpath and planning (planning? DID he plan that war, or just want to get the ball rolling again after 1918??)
In this I am asserting that there must have been, in such a politically charged and critical environment such as that, a person or people who were actually willing to place their lives on the line, and sohuld the end result of a success entail ANY kind of monetary reward, it would be a complete bonus and totally unintended. I say this because, having lived through the global emotional ordeal that was September 11, I am indeed aware that in times of crisis, people tend to show their true colours, the colours of their yellow bellies and black devil-hides that they have hidden under a facade of civility, pack-assimilation, and "politeness" for ever so long. Behind that goddamn MASK!

I will leave it here for now. Feel free to post, should you happen to read this blog at all.

I want to end with a question and its answer, just to put the dot under this post's final exclamation mark:

WHY did the Apollo Program eventually shut down in the 1970s? Financial cut-backs!
Why is the same country that made it to the moon soon to relinquish all independent capabilities to travel into space, and remain that way for at least a decade, with the end of the space shuttle program? Money, Money, MONEY!

Fuck money. I seek it and use only because the world I twaddle in has evolved its rules to require that I want and seek and use it.
I see it as the only true God in this world today, that Almighty Dollar, and I don't like God at all.

From The Tominator.