Space Launch Perspective

Science Fiction

by James Roland

On October 3rd, 2004, the first privately owned space ship took flight in the Mojave Desert. It was a milestone for America and the world. It lacked the mystery of the '60s space frenzy, but carried the promise of romance and adventure for generations numbed to the thought of hurtling through the cosmos. If commercial space flight becomes a reality it means the televised generations, from Buck Rogers to Star Wars, can live out their dreams for a small monthly payment.

In a world without frontiers, where cameras probe the deepest oceans and satellites blink above every hemisphere, thousands of people, myself included, flocked to see the event that could change their lives and lead them to the fictional realities of Arthur C. Clark and Ray Bradbury.

The desert was cold, dark, and alien. If not for the throngs of humans to either side it would be easy to imagine yourself on some distant moon. For hours we had waited, me and the small group of friends I'd pulled along for the adventure, stamping feet and cracking jokes to keep warm. Each of us would pause occasionally and strain our necks and ears for some break in the desert drone, a pause before take-off. But it didn't come, not for hours, until just before dawn.

Our teeth and our voices were chattering. Titus had just made some remark about space being a place for men, which was countered with a very intellectual response from John…something about a space ship and Titus's mother. Mary Renee and Annie smiled and rolled their eyes while the boys punched each other, and Jenn huddled on the ground and shivered in her sleep.

Dawn came early that day, a man-made sunrise that skipped the early morning thaw and jumped right into harsh afternoon. It was accompanied by mechanical thunder. Instead of the sun, a brilliant metallic space ship rose past the mountains. The desert crickets and cicadas stopped in mid-song as unbelievable heat swept over us. We grabbed the railing, pushed back by the force of the engines. Our hair swept from our faces and trailed behind our heads. The roar faded and I found myself panting. An emotion, something deep inside and indefinable, crept onto my face in the form of a smile. I turned to my group, all smiles and tears themselves.

"Guys! Wasn't that…" I gestured with my hands, motioning thoughts that were beyond my words. All five of my friends smiled and shared looks with each other. Titus looked back at me and spoke first.

"Beep," he said. "Beep beep." I froze in mid-gesticulation.

"What?" I said. The girls nodded their heads in unison and said, "Beep. Beep. Beep."

John was the last to join in, with a teacher's nod of approval, "Beep, beep, beep."

"Are you guys freaking nuts?" I said. Then the whole throng of thousands turned their heads to me and answered…

BEEP BEEP BEEP.

It was 7a.m. I turned off my alarm and I got ready for work.

Later, still damp from my one-minute shower, I stood in front of the stove, waiting for water to boil, staring through my bangs and doing my best impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, trying to radiate fear and ill-will to all the happy people in the world.

I stared at the note my roommates had left on the refrigerator:

JIMBO, AT SPACE FLIGHT, BE BACK TOMORROW.

A bizarre thought came to me. We're living in a world where someone can slap a note on a refrigerator door that says "at space flight" and no one blinks, no one looks twice.

"Honey, I'm going to watch that guy fly into outer space."

"Okay dear. Can you pick up some milk on the way home?"

Forty years ago this note would be as unimaginable as one that reads, "Cloning an alien, be back after lunch" or "Warming up the time machine, be back yesterday."

When did these things change? When did the world grow up and quit playing pretend with toy rockets and plastic ray guns from the supermarket?

I think it started, at least for America, sometime after the '60s. The magic built up for years like a child's anticipation of Christmas. The Space Race was Christmas Eve and Neil Armstrong was our Santa Claus, riding through the sky on Apollo 11 instead of a sleigh (a forced analogy, maybe, but with the '70s for a drowsy, tryptophan-induced nap and the Reagan-Era serving for the post-shopping, dear-lord-how-much-did-we-spend depression, I think it works rather nicely).

After we reached the moon and found (wonder of wonders!) dust and rocks, we became disillusioned adolescents. Our fantasy worlds of tractor beams and warp drives dwindled slowly into daydreams behind desks, before they faded all together into the sound of honking car horns, elevator music, and methodic taps on a keyboard. Space ceased to be a frontier, receded from our minds, and we checked it off the list of human endeavors. For years, young boys had dreamed about what we would find in the stars, until the men of science captured it, sterilized it and dissected it with sharp metal tools.

They cut out its mystery.

It was during the '90s in Washington State that I grew too big for space. I flew a space ship bunk-bed, complete with titanium quilt walls and an "observation deck." During space battles my childhood friends would fight for position on the upper bunk and once I was attacked by an evil alien that had disguised itself as my sister.

Later, I tried to convince my parents of the creature's true identity, and that the diagnosis of "broken tail bone" was just a devious plot to infiltrate our family and melt our brains.

They remained unconvinced.

Still, the adventures continued. It seemed like every planet we landed on had some volatile surface (usually lava) that forced us to leap from the observation deck to the top of the dresser. From there we proceeded with caution, jumping from rock to rock, each shaped like a familiar piece of furniture, until we escaped the monstrous caverns and emerged outside (don't ask me how we managed to land the space ship inside a cave).

Once we were outside I would protect the crew with my bionic arm. It was activated by pressing the mole in the center of my right wrist. My bionic arm could shoot fire and lasers, rip through steel, and basically do anything else I needed to escape any situation.

It came in handy on one expedition to my Grandma's house. Our space craft had landed in enemy territory. Down the landing plank and across the grass lake they waited for us with dirt clods, a hideous race of aliens that our ship's onboard computer recognized as Grlz. The carnage was brutal, the casualties great.

My last space trip was the summer I turned twelve. My parents had lost their job managing Stillwater Apartments, which meant, since we lived on site, we were also out of a home. Pennies were pinched and boxes were packed. On our final day, while the space craft idled out front, I wandered the old battle grounds where my men and I had bravely explored and fought alien female dangers.

But the Mothership called me back. The family flew farther into space, away from the sun, and did not see light for almost a year.

We eventually founded a new colony and breathed air again. And even though my outdoor adventures were soon to die, they were reborn in books. My old friends and I fought and explored again, this time with different faces and names. I flew to Mars with Ray Bradbury and faced aliens on the ocean floor with Michael Crichton. Isaac Asimov trapped me with robots on Mercury and Arthur C. Clark confused the hell out of me on the Moon.

Alas, even these adventures were hindered once I allied myself with my old female enemies. But dreams never really die, and still, post-college, I delve the mysteries of space, time and the human mind with Heinleinn, Wells and the rest.

These adventures in prose, and the films they inspired, have kept a tiny spark burning in the hearts of the new generations, the unnamed generations, the 00s and beyond.This is exactly what good science fiction is supposed to do. Not to sterilize our spirit of adventure but to spur it on, goad each race, nation and culture so that Man – with Earth and its limits behind him – can fly with his arms outstretched and yell into the abyss.

In the year 2004 this is exactly what happened.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who had already given much of his fortune to SETI and the Allen Institute of Brain Science, funded the SpaceShipOne project. The first privately funded space flight was achieved in the same year Allen opened the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame and when SpaceShipOne slipped the pull of gravity it took this generation, and all the generations to come, along with it.

I discovered recently that my dreams have returned. They come to me, sometimes when I'm stuck in traffic, sometimes when I'm working the file room of an office. But, mostly, they come in the quiet hours between midnight and morning. I see a room made of harsh metal and cut with angled shadows. In the dark, near the wall, I see green lights and red lights, blue and yellow. I hear a soft whir of gears and gyros, the throb of electricity and enormous engines. Then my eyes adjust to the dark and I see rows of human heads, dozens of people all harnessed into metal chairs. And as my eyes grow stronger I see they are old. They have sparse hair and false teeth, thin skin with thick veins. They are silent but share looks, some of them hold hands.

Then the walls come alive with sounds and the passengers tense with anticipation. A young technician appears and pushes some buttons. The ship begins to rotate beneath us. The technician pushes a final button and metal screens slide up along the walls, revealing the outside. We are blinded by hot sunlight. I look behind me to see the sun on the rise above a black horizon. It is brighter than I have ever known and as it crests I see we are far above the earth, hundreds of miles above the mountains and clouds. I turn back and see faces, the rows of old, lined faces with tired eyes. The faces are attached to old bodies with hands that clutch purses or other hands or tickets I know they've been saving for their entire lives. The faces smile and gasp and take the longest, deepest breath of their life, for some it may even be their last, as the ship veers off toward the stars.

With the Earth to our backs, the light fades away and so do I, pulling back to the present of my 24th year. But as things grow dim I see a final face, hidden in the back, and our eyes meet. It's a tired face, a face at the end, an old man with a smirk and an expression of awe.

And he looks a lot like me.

posted April 7, 2006


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