1,756,000,000,000$ Lets go to space.

I have a proposal, one that has the potential to bring some measure of peace on earth and bring us the stars. Let’s take our government’s science budget, all of the science budget, and switch it for our military budgets. Next we get all of the governments on the planet that have a larger military than science budget to switch them. After we have done that, let’s set a goal, like this “We are an interstellar species.” If one hundred and ninety six countries decided put the efforts of the seven billion people that they represent towards that goal we could not be stopped.

The United States currently budgets between six hundred billions and seven hundred billion dollars to military purposes, and only just over seventeen billion dollars on NASA. We have devoted hundreds of billion dollars to killing people from other countries, and not even twenty billion to meeting our galactic neighbors. I have heard the claim put out there that we should focus on “problems down here”, perhaps spending six hundred billion dollars on fighting the problems down here is only perpetuating them, perhaps we are searching for ways to justify not only the expenditure, but also the loss of life. I think it’s time to let go of the silly childish conflicts that plague our species, to stop trying to justify our fears, and to embrace a new struggle; A struggle against our ignorance, a species wide struggle to adapt to an interstellar environment. If seventeen billion dollars can get a robot to mars, where can we go on six hundred billion?

Six hundred billion is just the US, what if the whole world did this? If we all came together and told our governments to stop shooting at us, and start aiming for the stars, how much money could we put forward? 1,756,000,000,000$ That is what we as a species could start spending tomorrow on the greatest quest ever. Ask yourself, what is more important killing the other guy? Or going out there, and seeing a sunset on a planet that your ancestors could never even have dreamt of?

Keep looking up.

Side note and completely unrelated, at the request of a co-worker I am putting this on the internet. Deer are just wild forest goats.

A ramble of a love letter to you, and words, and gas...?

The beauty and glory of the universe has painted itself into every aspect of our lives, and our folk lore proves it. We as a species have a love affair with words; every culture has painted vistas of creation that mark our place out as special, as unique, as divinely created. We have married our eloquence to our imaginations and birthed gods.

From being built from the bones of the first giant, to being formed from forge fired steel, humanity has wondered at our vistas. We have looked at majestic mountains and seen them as the homes of divine beings, we have looked at oceans and seen the wombs from which goddesses rose. The majesty is all around us and we have struggled to quantify it since we developed language. If the awe we feel whilst standing at the edge of a vast expanse of living water is a gauge, how much more awe will we feel when we stand at the gateway to our galaxy? Is the wonder we feel at reaching a summit going to compare the elation we will feel as we move past our galactic neighborhood? Will we look upon new vistas and see the hands of gods? Will we revel in the beauty and wonder of our new and ever expanding horizon?

What is on that new horizon? Everything, that isn’t hyperbole everything is on that horizon. Humans change with their environment, what a wondrous avenue of change a whole galaxy of new venues and change. There are billions of stars and planets, and human ingenuity is limitless and the best way to push that ingenuity is to push our horizons. Let us find out what we need to survive on mars, or to mine the water from titan, let us develop interstellar ships that can support the multigenerational travel from here to our nearest neighbors, let’s go! We aren’t stuck here, we have minds that are unhindered, and we have opposable thumbs, let’s get the hell out of dodge! I want to summer on mars, and winter on Io. I want to go on safari on the distant moons of some unnamed planet forty million light years away, and so do you. 

I have a friend, let’s call her Cheesey(she gets it and she just laughed so fuck you), she is one of my favorite people. Cheesey is a biologist and an exuberant one. To see her face as she is cataloging alien plants would be the next greatest thing to being on the alien planet next to her. My mother, HI MOM!, is a Christian and to see her attempting to evangelize an alien species would be the highlight of my year. I could go on, with each of my friends and family members, but there is one thing I want to see more than any of these things, something I want more than to be the man to step foot on the red planet. I want to read the words of that man; I want to listen as his heart bursts with awe as the sun rises over the rust colored mountains. I want to watch as his soul is reformed with each new day in a new land. To witness a man’s evolution through his own words when he is confronted with terrifying glory of space would be the grandest of privileges. I do want to clarify; I want to be the man that writes those words, I want to have my mettle tested by a month’s long journey to a barren rock, I want to be the first man to die struggling for breath on Martian soil, and most of all I want my words to be the ones that inspire your children to brave the void. I, however, have to live in the real world and thus I want to live long enough to read the words of that lucky bastard who will leave his or her bones out there.

I had completely intended for this to be a love letter to the galaxy, just ask my mother I told her all about it last night, but it turned out to be a love letter to words. I truly do love words, they have a power that is unparalleled, but it isn’t the word itself that has power it is eloquence. Eloquence is power; it is the eloquence of people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson that are inspiring us to look to the stars again. It was due to eloquence that I fell in love with a woman who was no more than words on paper, that is magic, it is power, it is something that transcends reality. I cannot express this enough.

We live in a galaxy of chaotic balls of burning gas that all press on each other pushing planets into order and imparting energy onto marbles of stone and water that may support organisms that constantly challenge one another to be better, stronger, sneakier, fitter, which leads to a species that has the ability to write an ode to very star that birthed them. We are a species that feels not only a drive to propagate, to hunt, and survive, but we feel… everything. We feel heartbreak, we feel relief, we feel love; but all of that pales in comparison the fact that we share these feelings with scribbles on parchment.

The universe is ours to discover, I only hope that those who discover it have the language, the power, the eloquence to make us fall in love with it.