eighthphase

In honour of Atlantis's safe launch, today I watched a documentary about the shuttle program, intend to watch another one later, and beat Mass Effect 2.

No, really.

I have so many screenshots from going through the Omega 4 relay to the end of the game. 150, in fact. For the record, I took 217 through the whole game. That means that almost seventy percent of the screenshots I took are just from the endgame sequence; only 57 of those 217 are from before. (Additionally, I only took 54 through all of ME1.)

I'm not posting them all, of course, but somehow I still get the feeling that my tumblr followers (all two of them) are going to hate me. All I can say is, I'm pretty thankful for the queue.

(As I sat through the credits I saw that Claudia Black apparently did some voices in ME2! I hadn't noticed, but on subsequent playthroughs I'm going to have to keep an ear out.)

I still have some DLC to finish (Overlord, Arrival, Lair of the Shadow Broker, maybe Firewalker) but I think I want to go back to ME1 for a bit first. Though... I have a male Colonist Sole Survivor Infiltrator who's going to go renegade, and a female Earthborn War Hero Vanguard who I'm going to play properly paragade and I'm not sure which of them I should play first. (Then I also want to do another playthrough with my Soldier... but that's later, I suppose.)

Well! That's enough Mass Effect-ness for now, I think.

I just spent the last hour and a half watching a documentary about the Apollo astronauts, at the recommendation of my da; he's seen it like a million times, and thought he'd let me know it was on again so that I might watch it, since I'm so into that kind of thing. So basically I spent the last hour and a half on the verge of tears, except for when I was actually crying (which happened more than a couple of times), because seriously? It was powerful. It was moving. I realised that going in and even though I hate crying, I don't hate it right now at all. I don't regret it at all.

I'm only seventeen, and everyone's telling me, "It's okay if you don't know what you want to do! Everybody changes their minds about it!" (A little hypocritical of them, but that's neither here nor there.) And I used to be glad to hear that, because it made me feel better about myself, about how I didn't know what I wanted to do. But now, finally, I know, and I don't think I'm going to change my mind about it.

I want to write, and I want to see humanity reach out and take hold of our future out there, because that's where our future is. (I'm not going to make Star Trek references, because everybody does that and I think I've already used up my life's supply of them, between this icon and this tag. But, as someone raised on science fiction, the sentiment is there.) If I can just do that, I'll be the happiest person ever. And if I can, somehow, play a part in making that happen, however large or small a part it may be, I'll never regret a thing.

So, Obama's cut funding from NASA. Actually, what he really did was increase their budget, and then tell them in no uncertain terms that it was in no way whatsoever to be used toward the goal of getting our men back on the moon. Either way you look at it, it means that the Constellation Program? Yeah, that's basically been shafted.

This makes me unspeakably angry, for more than one reason.

First, I've got to read his State of the Union speech for APE. He spends a lot of time in it talking about programs (clean energy, high-speed rail systems, and the like) and how there's no reason why China or Europe should do those things before we do, because we're America and we do things like that first.

Well, there's no reason why they should return to the moon before we do, either, but thanks to his cutting the Constellation Program, they probably will.

Second, that whole American spirit thing. Isn't the American spirit to get out there, to explore and colonise new places? Americans jumped all over the chance to get out on the frontier otherwise known as the West. (And they obviously did, since I'm writing this in California.) There's another frontier out there. It's all around us. It's called outer space. Why aren't we out there? That is our future, and we are letting it stagnate.

Third, the "private sector." Obama says, "Don't worry, NASA, the private sector will keep working on manned missions into space! :D" (Er, paraphrased.) That's all well and good... if you want corporations and ridiculously wealthy individuals to be the only people ever out in space. (I was going to make an Iron Man 2 reference - "I've successfully privatised world peace." - but Tony Stark counts as a ridiculously wealthy individual, so maybe not.) Additionally, they're still working things out. They're not the end-all be-all of space. Sure, the private sector has funding that NASA clearly doesn't. Newsflash - NASA's got something that the private sector doesn't have. They've got experience. They actually know what they're doing! And considering how long it's taken NASA to get that experience, do we really want to wait for the private sector to do the same before we can move forward?

Fourth and finally, two points related to the Constellation Program specifically. The current shuttle fleet was due to be retired in 2010. This year. Now, if they are retired, then America wouldn't even be able to get its men to the ISS that Obama wants to focus on - not without relying on other countries, anyway. Do we want to do that? Are you sure?

But then, if they aren't retired, that's even more serious. The technology our shuttle fleet is based on is at least 25 years old. It's not efficient and we could do better. We were doing better, what with the Ares rockets and the Orion capsule. But then, those were part of the Constellation Program, meant to make manned space missions to the moon a reality once more, and so now NASA can't do that. So if the current shuttle fleet isn't retired, that means we're still using it. We're still using technology older than I am, technology that isn't efficient, that isn't reliable, and that isn't cheap to maintain.

We originally had five shuttles. We have three now. I don't think I need to remind anyone what happened to the other two. How many more times does that have to happen before the technology can change?

To wrap this up, since it's getting long and I need to actually finish getting ready this morning, I'll return to the State of the Union speech I was talking about earlier. Obama talks about how he's been told that, in regards to political change, "we should just put things on hold for a while." He goes on to say, "For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?"

How long, indeed, Mr. Obama. Our future is waiting for us. It won't wait forever.