If Wallace and Gromit could get there...

I was a little disappointed to read this yesterday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8489097.stm
While I was no big fan of the Bush administration, I am a big fan of the space program and the idea of a new round of visits to the moon,had got me quite excited. So I was keeping an eye on the latest news of the Constellation program and the Ares rocket and Orion craft.

While there's a general feeling that the program is flawed in trying to re-create past glories of moon landings, I'm a bit disappointed that we aren't doing a bit more on the moon.

For a start, could there not be another moon landing to try and silence those who still insist on saying the original landings were faked? (Why? Why are you so determined to see a great achievement of humanity's ingenuity and spirit pissed on?) Admittedly it's a large and costly venture to prove a point to a small group, but hey, what about going there to lead onto bigger things? We all want a moonbase! Dude, we so do! Tell me you wouldn't consider taking a holiday in a bio-dome on the moon? It'd be like CenterParcs! But on the fricking moon! Well if we want to see that as an affordable option in our lifetimes, NASA have to get up there more!

Now I also see from the story, that this will lead to a longer life for the International Space Station. Which is a good thing, to my mind it seemed a bit odd that for all the time, money and effort it took to build, why would it then have such a limited lifespan? There's a lot of stuff that could be done there, just in the field of scientific experiments for a start. Then there must be many practical applications for future projects. For instance, a orbital re-fueling facility is on the cards? ISS must be a good starting point to develop something around that. Even if it becomes the little shop, so an astronaut can pick up a paper and a pasty when he re-fuels.

The general upshot of the story is that NASA is going to be given a lot of money, not to continue it's own projects, but to incentivise private groups to develop technologies. This interests me. In the current economic climate (crap! I was so sure I wasn't going to ever say that in a blog about being a nerd!) many companies are going to be somewhat reluctant to invest too heavily in something like this. I mean, it's difficult to sell them on the idea of exactly when and how they'll ultimately profit from it? Space tourism? I realise that with the Space Shuttles retirement due and no replacement craft in development, NASA is going to need some lifts up to the ISS, so without private sector involvement, they'll be reliant on the Russian space program.

What concerns me about the idea of private companies being asked to get involved and develop their own space program is that in films, it's a bad thing. Weyland Yutani? Yep, 'The Company' from the Alien films! Those dudes would casually endanger innocent lives to get themselves crazed killing machine aliens!

In fact sci-fi is littered with examples of corporate interests in space travel leading to evil. Hey, who are those guys helping Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels? The Trade Federation? The Banking Clan? What about the Slitheen family in Doctor Who? Casually disregarding all life on a planet so they can sell it for raw materials.

Ironically, it's Star Trek that has a rce most obsessed with business and material wealth that don't make them evil! The Ferengi were I guess, supposed to be the big villian of The Next Generation, but ultimately turned into almost a comedy race. Deep Space Nine made more of them and did very well in depicting them as a society based on wealth and acquisition without making them evil. Though ulitmately they had to show the Ferengi as a race, start to show the signs of obtaining a new direction that would probably lead them more towards the Federation.

It's partly a reflection of the times I guess. The late 70's and early 80's was the same time Lex Luthor stopped being a mad scientist and became a businessman, that's when the first couple of Alien films came out and it went on from there. The Ferengi came from a very 80's idea (like most of the early Next Generation stuff) too.

Hey, look, I went off on a tangent! I was just musing on the Constellation project's cancellation and managed to end up talking about the attitudes toward 'businessmen' in sci-fi!

So in summary, sci-fi has told us that businesses are bad and I think we should go to the moon!