Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 57

My Thoughts After Curiosity’s Landing

I am so pleased to see that the landing on Mars was pulled off without a hitch. My friend Ryan suggested that the degree of difficulty alone should earn JPL an Olympic gold medal for each of the engineers involved in the Curiosity landing. After all, we stuck our landing from 35 million miles away. I concur, it’s god damn right, no one really seems to comprehend just how difficult it was to accomplish what that team of scientists and engineers made look so simple.

Ryan works in a hotel and apparently one of the mouth breathers that he checked in as a guest yesterday informed him that the only reason we sent a rover to Mars was because Democrats think we’re destroying the environment and they sold the government on colonization. A truly absurd declaration, a bit paranoid and ill informed, but it did get me thinking about colonization.

Colonization of Mars is, or should be, an imperative without any need to sell a particular government on the idea. Only the functionally retarded would think that it was part of some insidious agenda to suggest such a thing. If you lived in immediate proximity to an active volcano, you fucking move away from it…if you have an ounce of common sense.

The same goes for us as a species. The further we spread out, the safer we are. Colonizing Mars may be expensive, but we damn well should be doing it. Not because we have fucked up our environment here on Earth, but because we are no more safe here than the goddamn dinosaurs were.

The reality is that we aren’t prepping for colonization, no matter how much we should be. Curiosity is all about trying to increase our knowledge and understanding of the universe around us…and the first real steps are to become more familiar with our neighborhood.

I find it sad that we don’t have human beings on the surface of Mars already. At the very least we should have adaptive intelligence of some kind there…a rover with the capacity to redefine mission parameters to suit the conditions it discovers. Even if it isn’t cost effective to send a human being, we should be sending a swarm of networked robots…something with an approximation of a neural network, something that can learn as it goes, troubleshooting and problem solving.

Maybe we should send death row inmates, get them some training and ship a bunch of them to Mars; put them to use collecting samples, collating data, and constructing long-term habitats. The same sort of thing worked for Australia. Give them the opportunity to give something back to the society that has otherwise been providing their care and well-being since incarceration. Hell, the responsibility and need to depend on one another for survival might actually rehabilitate them in a way that no known prison system ever could.

The irony, Ryan says, is that he would go out and kill someone just for a ticket to Mars. I can’t even blame him for it. But, if we were committed to sending human beings out there, I imagine that we would be sending volunteers as well…something akin to the Homesteader’s Act back in the mid-1800s here in America. I would probably sign up for that, even if it was guaranteed to be a one-way ticket with a higher than normal risk of fatality.

Collect a mixed bag of volunteers, criminals, and the like…put them through an astronaut/scientist boot camp…a few months of study and preparation…ship them off to the red planet. Drop supplies and equipment beforehand as well as additional supplies and such along with the passenger transports, redundancy is key when it comes to proper engineering…make sure that there is more than is necessary to insure that there is enough to fit the needs of the colonists.

We could get a couple hundred people up there on Mars; digging tunnels, establishing habitats, setting up greenhouses, water reclamation systems, and scientific outposts. Fuck terraforming, just set up pockets of safe, secure, underground inhabitation zones. Underground colonies would be our safest bet. Dig and dig, reinforce the walls with combinations of concretes and plastics to hold in our artificial atmosphere.

We could easily have a few thousand people living permanently on Mars in less than a century and thus we would have increased our odds of survival dramatically.

There is little to no core activity on Mars, no active volcanic behavior or quakes. They would be safer living underground than we are above. The thinner atmosphere makes those terrifying looking storms nothing more than dust storms, not even enough to damage household window glass; so we could easily build domes for above ground purposes.

Surround Mars with satellites for GPS and communication purposes and it would ultimately be no more inconvenient than living on Earth, but with a sense of wonder and exploration that is lacking here.

Experiment with breeding flora that can thrive outside of domes and caverns, some fauna as well; it could open up huge new avenues of exploration for genetics and agriculture.

And, best of all, once we have firmly shown that we can survive and thrive there on Mars; we could jump to the next option, Ganymede (which is barely smaller than Mars) and possibly Callisto.

From Jupiter orbits we would have a suitable base of operations for studying Europa. I envision massive submarine cities anchored to the underside of the ice on Europa, or slowly floating through the oceans there.

From there we can spread out to the moons around Saturn and Neptune, maybe even Pluto/Charon. Hell, there’s no really good reason not to go further and set up smaller colonies on the larger Kuiper Belt objects.

There’s no good reason not to do any of these things. There’s nothing to say that we couldn’t have colonies of at least hundreds (if not thousands) of people littering the solar system, including permanent station-based orbital colonies within the asteroid belt.

The economic forces could change substantially, with no need for Earth-based products given adequate time especially on the larger, nearer Earth colonies.

The asteroid colonies could be hollowing out larger bodies, turning asteroids into hollowed out structures for additional colonization; or, better yet, into durable substrates for additional exploration, cored asteroids as vessels.

Even if we acted conservatively we could easily have people exiting the solar system in less than a thousand years. By all rights though, even if we took our sweet time I see no reason why we couldn’t have huge colonies all over the solar system in less than 500 years. The Americas have been colonized from the European expansion for only about that long and look what we’ve built.

Some of those transoceanic voyages for our ancestors took just as long as the voyages between planets would require, and were far more costly both in terms of proportionate economics and human survival.

Just having a network of humanity spread out through our own solar system would greatly increase our knowledge. The discoveries we would experience are greater than I can actually imagine (not having been out there). Who knows how vast our understanding of the universe could become from something so small. The social implications alone would be amazing, to learn how cultures would change and evolve from one colonized region to the next. Over thousands of years we could even begin to see small changes in our species as different gravities, atmospheres, and keys to survival impacted natural selection.

The payout from colonization of just nearby regions of the moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt could be massive. They could easily become self-sustained with no further need of anything from Earth, and they could even provide resources that would more than return the initial investment.

All we have are excuses as to why we aren’t doing these things…no reasons.

We should have underground cities on the moon and Mars already…they should have been established since before I even reached my 20s. These were things that should have been done right along with the assembly of the ISS. We might have brought nations together in ways that we have otherwise never been able to manage.

How long before people forget about being Japanese, American, Palestinian…and begin to see themselves in the more realistic terms of being Martian, Lunar, Jovian, or whatever? That might be what it takes to beat the reality into our thick fucking human skulls.

How petty and stupid would imaginary borders look from the perspective of people who are millions of miles away, separated literally by being worlds apart.

We live in a world of myopic, juvenile little nation states…populated by people who are somehow stupid enough to believe that an imaginary line drawn in the sand makes me a citizen here, but four steps in another direction a foreigner. That is ludicrous beyond belief.

That’s all; I just wanted to babble a little bit. Hopefully it wasn’t terribly disjointed and impossible to follow.

 

Work In Progress #1 (first draft snippet)

There was no choice anymore, not as far as he was concerned. He had to go back again, to return to a home that felt utterly alien and forbidding, a place he thought he had left behind a long time ago with the intent to never return.

That unspeakable damned thing was still there, churning beneath the surface of everything that had once seemed so familiar and innocent to him; everything that he had grown up with, everything that he had known and loved as a child, until the brittle facade of safety and normalcy was torn away and he had been forced to stare, slack jawed and terrified into the unknown and unholy reality that riddled the substrate.

Nestled there in the foothills, it seemed like such a typical (almost wholesome) small town environment; a bit of early settlement history mingled with that of the indigenous people of the region, some mom & pop businesses, and an old discontinued gypsum mine that hadn’t been active since before he was born.

His childhood had been filled with an abundance of nature and plenty of outdoor activities; strange that it was the hideous, formless aspect of some of that very nature that most concerned him and plagued him, even decades later, with nightmares.

It had killed again, after being dormant and apparently harmless for all those intervening years. It had been disturbed, foolishly, by one of his childhood friends, another victim of the unwelcome knowledge that this thing existed beneath the feet of the couple hundred residents of their hometown.

What had gotten into that fucking idiot’s head? He asked himself that question over and over again as he prepared to return home for the funeral. The strange circumstances surrounding the death were clear enough that he had some idea what had happened, it was the ‘why’ of it all that troubled him. He damn well intended to find out the answer.

He hated being back in South Dakota; that was why he had moved to the West coast in the first place, just to distance himself from the Midwest in general. Plus, distance from the region provided him with distance from that fucking thing that he knew was still down there, lurking in the earth.

For all he knew, those things were everywhere, some nameless organism that had eluded discovery, but he didn’t care. He knew of this one with certainty, and he gladly subscribed to the perspective that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He was blissfully and willfully ignorant of any such things that might be residing beneath the surface of the Oregon home that he loved so dearly.

Here he was though, back in the white trash fantasy camp wasteland that he grew up with, and he just wanted to go back home.

Forgotten Dreams Lost Along the Way

When I enrolled in college as a double major, studying physics and chemistry, it was with grand, lofty dreams of working for JPL…after which I intended to travel to the UK and spend some time at Reading University, working in cybernetics. I wanted to transition from my dual majors to a Ph.D program in nanoscience & nanoengineering…education and expertise which I could utilize in efforts to develop artificial organs for transplant, better organs than those that we are born with, ones that could extend life indefinitely.

Instead I only made it three years into my undergraduate studies before real life got in the way…working full-time, raising children full-time, and attending college as well; it was simply too much to have on my plate, something had to give, and my higher education was being placed on the back burner far too often. My GPA was suffering, my ability to focus on necessary studies as well, and there was really no choice but to ultimately leave school…something that I really did not want to do, but schedules were too much in conflict.

Here I am, waiting to see the Mars landing, reminiscing about the dreams that I had for my future not altogether so long ago. My girlfriend received notice today that she was on the Dean’s List for her school where she is studying to be a medical assistant, and I was reminded of how I never had the requisite attention to put toward my education to do the same. I am reminded of how far short I have fallen from what I wanted for myself, what everyone seemed to believe I was capable of being.

Chandra wants me to cut down my hours to part-time and enroll in school again after she’s finished with her own school and gotten into a career where she is earning adequate income to compensate for the decrease on my end. I worry that I still won’t have what it takes…but I would do my best not to let her (or myself) down.

I wonder where my future will lead. I returned to my first love, writing…and I feel satisfied as hell doing so…if only I could really get back to it with as much focus and discipline as I need. I don’t know what to do, but I know that I need to do it.

That’s all…just some random thoughts for the night.

Land well on Mars, you beautiful piece of elegant machinery. Make us proud and increase our knowledge and understanding of the universe we’re such an insignificant part of. I am watching, and so are many others.

Babar the Elephant Man

Just a little something that I put together really quick because the idea popped into my head and I thought it would be funny.

Rest In Peace

It makes me sad to think that Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, felt that she needed to hide her sexual preference. The woman was a national treasure and should have felt confident that she would be loved, respected, and embraced for the courageous, brilliant woman that she was…regardless of where her attractions happened to focus.

Things like that are precisely why I sometimes find myself feeling ashamed to be an American.

That is all.

Thinking About the Future

I have spent a little while deliberating with myself…trying to determine the best way that I can manage to frame a proposal…proposal for marriage, that is.

Something romantic, something sweet, something that might even bring tears to her eyes.

I want to do this right. I want to make it something that she will treasure and look back upon with unparalleled fondness for the rest of her life.

I have plenty of time left to think about this particular subject…there won’t be an engagement until she and I both have finalized divorces, and I still won’t be able to afford the ring that she deserves until some time after that, I’m sure…not without some major changes in my financial status.

I keep wishing that I could do something worthwhile to change my life in a fairly expedient manner, something to make me feel more worthy of her choosing to spend her life with me. I know that she is happy with me just the way that I am, and I can’t begin to express the gratitude that I feel for that…but I want to give her the life that I know she deserves, and to be able to provide the degree of comfort and happiness that I want us to all share as a family. I really need to get more writing done, and it needs to be fucking spectacular…because there is no other way that I could conceive of that I might be able to build the sort of life that I want for us. It won’t matter when people don’t even read what I’ve already written…I wish that I could be taken seriously as an author, but it doesn’t feel like that is happening.

I’ve gotten off track though.

I want to be in a position to give her the wedding that she deserves. I want us to have a lovely little vacation for our honeymoon. I want to be able to take actual vacations as a family…to places outside of South Dakota. I really want to have a better life than the one I have been living, to provide my children and my future wife (and her children as well) with a better life than I had…and so far I have been doing a less than stellar job of that.

It’s a moot point though, I can want in one hand and shit in the other…and we know which one will fill up first. I am putting the cart before the horse anyhow…I need to figure out how to propose to her before I worry about putting together the right wedding for us…or any sort of honeymoon.

Anyone who has any suggestions…I am happy to hear them.

To Hell With Them

I am appalled, to put it nicely. I just read an article from The Huffington Post where I was informed that those clowns from Westboro Baptist are being called on to picket the Stallone funeral.

I am not a violent man, but if I were ever present at any of the military funerals where those monstrous cocksuckers were rallied…I might just have to give it a shot.

What perplexes me is how Fred Phelps has gone this long without taking his whole troupe of illiterate, functionally retarded followers out in a Jonestown fantasy camp sort of finale. It would save the rest of us a great deal of pain and suffering (perhaps not me personally), and they could haul their sorry asses off to this insipid afterlife that they expect to find waiting for them.

I am not a believer…and in fact I have some rather negative perspectives regarding religion in general…but even I am fully aware of the fact that these assholes don’t speak for Christianity as a whole. I’m sincerely surprised that other Christians haven’t simply decided to wipe them out just like one would remove spoiled fruit from a basket…if only to keep this most vocal minority from waving the banner for the whole damn group.

It saddens me that people like this exist at all because it makes me realize that the world we live in will always be a miserable place as long as people like that are out there doing their best to ruin it for us.

No Catharsis

There are times when I am forced to wonder if I am totally unsuited to relationships (not even solely romantic ones, but friendships and the like as well, though it is those of a romantic nature that I am speaking of here). In fact I am almost certain that I am not suited for it…but god damn if I am not trying.

A lifetime of failed relationships and truly unhealthy involvements really hasn’t prepared me for what I have in front of me. I’m insecure, I’m perpetually saying the wrong thing or saying things the wrong way, and I can’t help but feel that I am way out of my league with this woman.

I have positively no doubt that she loves me, and am even more certain of how I feel about her…that is not an issue at all. I don’t even know where the issue happens to arise, but they exist just the same. I don’t know how to communicate with her without it all coming out wrong, and I keep trying only to make it worse. I want to express the insecurities that I have, the fears and doubts, to open a line of communication with her that will facilitate reaching a resolution and maybe, just maybe, combatting some of this shit in my head and fixing some of the damage that has been done.

She is an amazing woman; beautiful, funny, sweet, smart as all hell, a better mother than she would ever give herself credit for being, she loves books, she loves the same movies as I do, and she is easily the most supportive and loving woman I could ever imagine having in my life, not to mention being overwhelmingly sexy…and I don’t go a day without wondering what the hell she could possibly see in me, while conversely begging the universe to never let her stop seeing whatever that might be.

I know how lucky I am, I am not the sort of imbecile who overlooks that sort of thing and takes it for granted…instead I am the sort of imbecile who wonders aloud how I could possible measure up against what I know she deserves. She is easily the best thing that has happened to me (outside of my children, because they are fucking magnificent examples of just how great life can be), and I want nothing more than to give her cause to feel the same way…just like I do, on a daily basis. I want her to look around at her life with me and feel the same sense of awe and wonder at how unexpectedly beautiful life has become, how surprisingly perfect things can be. I just don’t know how to be the man who can elicit such things…I don’t know if I even have it in me to be that sort of man. She would probably say that I already have succeeded, but she is sweet and she’s in love with me, so her perspective is biased.

I don’t know what the purpose may have been in sharing all of this. Maybe I was hoping for advice? Probably, I just wanted to put it all into words, straighten out my thoughts a little bit…and maybe stumble upon some catharsis that has eluded me so far, and eludes me still.

Damn it all. It was worth a shot though.

Errata Addendum

March 2nd, 2011

The words come out all wrong, twisted on my tongue.

Things i need to say become distorted as they leave my lips.

Failure seems so certain when i can’t seem to find the words.

The right words, to change your mind, to make you stay.

Next to you i feel so mute and ineffective.

When you’re here i just can’t seem to do things right.

You make me shiver and i bite my tongue.

I keep telling myself that there will be another night.

I can see it in your eyes when everything i say is wrong.

I never want to fail you, but i can’t seem to get it right.

Frustration builds inside of me, knowing that I fall so short.

A better version of me might stand a chance where i do not.

Here with you i am so mute and ineffective.

I try so hard, but can’t seem to do things right.

Shivering, afraid, i bite my tongue.

Knowing that i can’t put it off for another night.

Further Errata

I want to burn your perfect life to the ground…

and choke on ash.

I need to sweep away the shelter where you stand…

let it collapse.

Everything you thought was right is wrong…

and I think you know.

There is only one solution I can see…

just let it go.

 

Stop the world.

It’s been broken all along, this cannot stand.

Tear it down.

You need to let it go, just take my hand.

 

I want to rip the little lies from your mind…

and watch them die.

We have to strip all these illusions from your eyes…

just know it’s right.

All the things you have, I must destroy…

please save your tears.

I dream of watching your whole life falling down…

but I’m right here.

 

Stop the world.

It’s been broken all along, this shouldn’t stand.

Tear it down.

We need to rebuild, just take my hand.