when bush announced his grand plans for the future of the space program many people took it with an implied nudge-nudge wink-wink. after all the plans were impossibly expensive, and on the whole (moon-base-this and men-on-mars-that) bordered on downright wrongheaded, especially when the plans came at the cost of losing important scientific programs, like hubble for example. savvy onlookers saw a transparent campaign ploy to bolster gwb’s heavily tarnished image. even more savvy onlookers, looking at the money involved, wondered what the real agenda would be.

well now with the release of the “u.s. air force transformation flight plan” we no longer have to wonder. aside from the obviously misguided attempt to regain some of the rhetorical “uniter not divider” steam that bush snuck into the white house on, it’s clear that the administrations interest in space is not just smoke an mirrors, it’s also earth and enemy satellite targeting lasers. in short, and who can possibly even feign surprise, it’s about the militarizing of space.

what strikes me about this commanders of the sky / rulers of the stars ambition is how it reflects on humanity in general. we are so bamboozled by our own vision of ourselves, about our great progress and our enlightenment. we look backward at history, and sideways at cultures that seem torn from history with incredible smugness. we look and we spit out our list of adjectives: ignorant, foolish, savage, uncivilized, superstitious, intolerant, barbaric. we look at ourselves and all our great advancements, our medicine, our technology, our science, our higher standard of living, our longer life spans and we feel impossibly superior to those who came before.  we look backward as if looking at an extinct species who we can’t even begin relate with. “how could they? can you believe it? it’s incredible! what were they thinking? what horrors!” and yet what is the militarizing of space? it is a continuation of the sharpened stones, the spears, the long boats, the castles, the catapults, the battlements, the trenches, the ovens, the napalm. we think we have come so far, that we have somehow raised ourselves above our brutal, petty, posturing, dogmatic, short sighted, power crazed predecessors. it seems to me we have not changed all that much.

i wonder whether we will ever get to the next phase? the next step? whether humanity will ever really get somewhere or whether we will always be the same, just with new gadgets, new dogmas, and new disputes? i wonder whether we will ever find a purpose as a species? i wonder whether we will evolve into something different and better or whether every generation will have the same exact experience until the end, when the sun grows to engulf us, or the whatever unknown cataclysm hits? i wonder whether we will ever get off this planet for a reason other than profit or supremacy? i hope so, but it might be a bit harder to traverse an exosphere already crowded with death rays.

anyhow, enough space opera. while we wait for the battlestars to become fully operational let’s tap our toes to the beautiful music that is the sound of progress! so catchy!