Location: Deskbound, Dreaming of the Final Frontier

I have to say that for me, this topic will not die.  I loved my time at the International Space Flight Museum so much that I want to go back soon.

It’s that great, as-yet-unfulfilled dream of spreading across the cosmos.  I know, I know. We are a destructive and warlike species that is systematically wrecking our own home! How dare we spread the contagion out of earth’s gravity-well to the stars?

The counterpoint is that humanity is also capable of amazing altruism and acts of beauty.  H.G. Wells wrote a book Men Like Gods; Wells’ was an era of wild techno-fetishism; I’ll cling to that, thanks.  I’d temper it with an environmental sensibility….And then there is the American space-cowboy ethos of “what the hell! Who cares how much it costs!  Let’s just go to Mars!“

All this raced through my mind when Iggy stood in the rocket garden of the ISM.  And then, I got to ride my “bird” to the Space Station and then see the rovers on the Martian surface in SL.  Here are the salient bits I’ve salvaged from the Blog-opocalypse:

I still dream of space colonies and Mars bases, though I recognize that the costs are so huge that I’ll never see them in my lifetime.  So when Ignatius rode a Titan II rocket to the orbital part of the International Space Museum (ISM), at times he felt he was in a cemetery for old dreams. Clever designers had placed it, in an act of both homage and irony, inside the newly imagined frontier we call Second Life.

Spaceport Alpha is worth an extended visit for both its ground and orbital areas.  An avatar can see a scale model of any of the solar system’s worlds, and for Mars there is a simulated surface area with models of all the rovers and landers that have been (or will soon be) on the Red Planet.

In all of my time in SL, I never encounter as much “gee whiz!” as I thought I might.  I’m not saying that my fellow residents are jaded, but we might be taking for granted a venue that permits real-time interaction globally plus flying, teleporting, and wild creativity such as the ISM.

Old-media types generally do not get SL at all…yet many newspapermen and brilliant TV journalists like Walter Cronkite love space exploration.  They are not nay-sayers there.  Perhaps some of SL’s critics would feel a bit more inspired, a bit more convinced that the Metaverse is not just sex and shopping, were they to come to Mars or the Asteroid Belt with me. 

That Titan’s Gemini capsule seats two.  Join me sometime to re-experience the wonder of a Frontier we have ignored since the 70s, even as we build a new one in cyberspace.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Ummm…I don’t get it.  What is “SL?“ And whatever happened to the idea of a circular space station?

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