Also, get off my lawn AND INTO SPACE.

[mrissa]

Hey, look, everybody! It's the angriest day of the year! I should just not read commentary by people I don't already know and like on July 20. Uff da.

I wasn't there, so I want to know: when did it become teenagers' fault that we don't have a more robust space program? Seriously, it's a great strategy. Now that I'm 11 years (okay, okay: 10 years and 359 days) from the last year in which I could be considered a teenager, I'm really coming to appreciate it. I don't have to own up to my choices as a voter! I don't have to acknowledge where my own charitable contributions or volunteer time or lack of same are going! Instead of it being partly my fault for having a variety of political and social concerns and making choices based on balance there, I can simply blame the only people in our society who could not possibly have played a part in creating the situation. Hey, thanks, people who reached adulthood before me! You thought this one out really well! And teenagers are so used to being blamed for things their little brother or that jerk in their second period class did, what's one more? I mean, it's kind of a big one more. But they're already so irresponsible for not getting the jobs our system doesn't have for them--and selfish and small-minded for worrying about paying for college instead of Dreaming Big Dreams the way we did when college was cheaper--so it's sort of like a training program for taking the space-related blame. Neat how that works out.

The only drawback I'm seeing here is that I am young enough that I will never be able to claim, as some people shooting their mouths off today seem to feel they are able to, that the Apollo program was created of my inchoate childhood or teenage longings. See, I thought it was created of engineering. But I see now that that would make any lacks in current space programs the fault of people who decide how to fund engineers and for which projects, rather than the fault of kids these days not dreaming big enough. So clearly that doesn't work. Probably it's my own fault for aiming my inchoate teenage longings at getting out of the school system I was (of course) fully teenage-responsible for creating. Let that be a lesson, teenagers! Stick close to your desks, and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Space Navy. Do not attempt to escape the system personally! We need that dream fuel to create space programs without funding engineers! Dream harder! But never for yourselves, because that would put you back in the wrong! Where you are anyway! Great deal, huh?

Well. There's my quota of exclamation marks for the year. And a serious and non-sarcastic thanks to those of you who were alive 40 years ago and manage to remember a great feat of engineering without casting aspersions on those who never had the chance to see anything similar.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

You are awesome and right.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I was alive 40 years ago, and a teenager at the time. (14!) I was thrilled that NASA put people on the moon, but of course I had nothing to do with it. It was all in motion while I went through school with my nose stuck in books. I read so much SF, in fact, that I was a little surprised when I realized, some time before, that we hadn't already been to the moon.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

*Applause*

And thank you for the reminder to be careful who I read today. Oy...

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Wow! Now I want to know what you read that set you off.

The best year to be born to become a moonwalker (Mr. Jackson aside) was 1930. This is a very long time ago. Before our parents were even voters.

Plus, my aerospace friends want to know what the hell is wrong with their robots? Cheaper safer and more data intensive than (hu)manned flight.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

It was cool, even though plenty of people were careful to point out (directly or indirectly) Girls Couldn't Do That. Some of them, you know, the same people who are so busy whingeing about how those of us who were 11 at the time (or younger, or not even conceived) are to blame for How Things Are Now.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

I'm curious what you've been reading, too. I get my morning news from public radio on my drive to work, and they were mostly talking about India, Pakistan, Afganistan, and Walter Cronkite.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

No, it's because you read fantasy! That's why Western civilization is collapsing!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am fond of their robots.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It isn't because I write fantasy? I thought that was part of it. Because I write SF, so I should only write SF, or Western civilization will fall.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Those reasons are closely related, you barbarian!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is me slavering at the gates.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Sing it! Yes, absolutely.

I understand why you might not want to, but I wish you'd say it directly as a response over there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Alas, the main reason I didn't say it as a response over there is that more than one person has set me off that way today. Once I got past three, I decided it belonged over here instead of copying and pasting the same rant several times.

[thoughtdancer.livejournal.com]

/rant on

So with you.

But I once asked my lj friends what "big dreams" they had.

No one had any.

I've got easily 5--including starting a college for ADHD and other learning disabled folks (show them whose smart!) to writing speculative fiction that shows others to do big things from dreaming big dreams.

And how very important the long slow slog of work is to get those dreams done.

I've a second part of your rant: the space program is often explained as a propaganda move, as part of the larger battle of the cold war. Implicitly, that means that without a cold war we don't need to "show them who's best" through a space program.

Oh, really? All it was was propaganda? Hell no! It was exploration, advancement of knowledge, creating new opportunities... it was and is what we have always needed. To make ourselves do more than merely do as well as the prior generation.

Something we've arranged to fail at, just about at the same time as this generation (post-Baby boomers) started to come in to our own.

I wonder why is that? Maybe it's because of the way the society/economics have been hamstrung by our elders?

Or maybe we really did learn to no longer dream big dreams.

Ah, hell no. We dream. We're just not sure how to say it or do anything about it. That's why there's no space program, in my not so humble opinion.

/rant off

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I thought it was created of engineering.

In my usual inappropriate way, this makes me want to make a tee-shirt.

Made of Engineering!

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I LOVE those robots! Who doesn't love those robots?? Everyone loves those robots.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

If you're of a certain disposition, everything is the teenagers' fault. They're so busy texting, and like, shopping and stuff or maybe reading or acting or playing the clarinet. Whatever it is, they aren't building any more space ships.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Busted! It's my fault, only I was reading and doing ballet and tap and playing the clarinet. (Not all at the same time, alas, although I did get good at playing scales while reading the newspaper.)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Heinlein (and some others in those days, but mostly him) expected building spaceships to be on the level of clarinet lessons by now. So maybe we should be looking for who stopped that from happening, and why teenagers are doing DNA research instead.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

It's clearly the fault of politicians.

Isn't everything, just about?

[redbird]

Oh, dear. I'm sorry you're seeing this crap, and repeatedly. (I've not, yet, but my LJ friends list is selected for not being people I consider idiots or hostile, and I haven't looked at much but that, selected headlines, and a weather blog.)

It would be barely plausible for them to blame me: I was old enough to vote for most of the 1980s and since, and I may remember Apollo.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that if you follow this line of logic far enough, it might be Jack Kilby's fault.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Regarding big dreams: when you are someone who chatters away happily to strangers, as I am, people often make the mistake of thinking they're hearing everything there is to hear. I don't talk about dreams and aspirations readily at all, because for me they're private. They're very personal. If I had been reading your lj at that time, I wouldn't have answered in an lj comment, and I might not have answered at all. (If I had, it would have been in a private e-mail.) But I am working on the big things that are really important to me. I hope that more people are like that. It's so hard to tell from the outside sometimes.

And regarding propaganda: I think it's entirely possible for something to be used as propaganda without being limited to that use. I saw this when I was a girrrrrl physics major: there was a lot of "look, look, a girrrrrrl!" But that didn't mean that was why I was doing it. It certainly didn't mean it was the only reason I was doing it. (And to a certain extent I support that propaganda use: "girls can do science" is a message I can get behind.) So being able to deconstruct the propaganda uses of the space program in no way detracts from the actual technological advances made thereby.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would wear that.

[clarentine]

I was in first grade when we went to the moon. I remember sitting in the cafeteria watching the broadcast and not understanding what it was we were to be paying attention to. 6-year-old me was not particularly strong on the abstract thought thing. *g* (Not that I'm all that much better today!)

I look back now at all the history that's happened since I was old enough to recognize it for what it was, and you know what feat stands out still for me, and awes me every time? The destruction of the Berlin Wall--which was a sociological phenomenon, true, but quite an undertaking nevertheless. I watched that one with the spellbound fascination my teachers no doubt thought I should feel as we watched the moon landing.