Giant Space Bat poised to Eat the Earth!
No, that’s not really a picture of the wings of a Giant Space Bat, taking aim on where his first bite will be. It’s a “selfie”(1) taken by the Planetary Society’s crowd-funded pure research space craft: Light Sail 2.
It even has its own Mission Patch.
Some of you know what the Planetary Society is, but most of you don’t. It’s a private outfit that has been promoting interest in and education about “getting into space” for several decades. The Planetary Society can be found at www.planetary.org. It was started by Carl Sagan and is currently headed by Bill Nye (of the Science Guy fame and really cool dude).
Let me say this again: this is a pure research craft(2) that was funded entirely by folks going, “sure, I’ll give you $5 for this project.” Or $50 or $1 or what ever each person gave. As the name suggests, it’s not even the first such mission.
Put up there by the PEOPLE of Earth. Not by a government jockeying for position / prestige against other governments. Not by a corporation hoping to plant its flag on Mars before anyone else does and some how turn that into a Buck or six. Not even by a nation wanting to stake out the Moon and maybe revive the old fears and panics of the “Space Race” days. No, it was put up there by People who wanted to see if a Light Sail could actually be made to work(3).
This is important to me because it’s People doing what People want to do, regardless of whether it’s thought possible in the “public eye.” Wasn’t too long ago that only Big Governments were considered rich enough to even dream about going into Space. Now we have many governments (even some smaller ones) and a plethora of private outfits (such as Space-X, Ad Astra, Air Launch, Blue Origin, many others) that can go into Space. Well, into Low Earth Orbit, some even into High Earth Orbit because that’s where all our communication satellites live. One or two are planning on going to the Moon. Space-X, of course, is aiming for Mars, in fact, sent a car there last year (no, I’m not kidding — they sent a Tesla, naturally enough [it crosses Mars’ orbit, and comes back near Earth and will repeat that, maybe forever, unless it’s gather up into a museum at some point]). Many governments have announced plans to reach the Moon in the 2020’s(4), and some are also pointed at Mars. Space is now Big Business. Or soon will be.
But here… here is a small organization, who through their membership only — not government funds, not corporate deep-pockets, but through private money — has gone to space and added a significant bit of understanding to the World’s bag of Technology Tricks.
What People can do when they’re not busy being Sheeple.
Isn’t that just the coolest thing?
(1) In my day, we called them self-portraits — oh wait! It’s still my day! I’m still alive. Good Heavens! So why are they called “selfies?” Probably only because it’s fewer syllables. That’s how languages evolve, toward fewer syllables, and (often) less precision. It’s normal. Not desirable perhaps, but certainly normal. This is part of why technical terms have to be reinvented from time to time. Note that “selfie” also comes with the extra baggage that this is probably a low quality picture taken in silly or narcissistic circumstances, while “portrait” still implies a picture of higher quality (though perhaps equally narcissistic) but might also be drifting toward the “pretentious” side of a word’s life. (Continuing to use a word in its original meaning and usage when the “main stream” has drifted into some fad usage or replacement is now considered “pretentious” by that same mainstream who redefines words just because…)
(2) NASA doesn’t pure research missions, counter-intuitive as that might seem. Congress and much of the media-fed public see them as wasteful, so they can’t. It was bad enough when a couple Mars missions failed to actually hit the target. The Media is totally at fault here. Instead of praising NASA for the nearly impossible feat of actually getting many craft successfully to Mars, they just ho-hum it on the news, if they notice it at all, but let a craft fail and they are all over it, making Big Hay out of it for no valid and certainly no positive purpose. Like getting into space isn’t hard enough, you have to give NASA this political jive as well? And if you think “getting into space” isn’t worthwhile, I’ll cite for you that your personal computer, cell phone and microwave oven, as well as several types of fabrics, glues, pharmaceuticals, tiny hearing aids and 1,000’s of other things are all direct fall-outs from the World’s efforts to get into Space. So there. 😛
(3) If you don’t know what a light sail is, it’s a concept that’s been heavily used in some excellent Sci-Fi (books, not in movies yet — save one episode of Deep Space 9, so far as I can recall), but never before been done in reality, since, as I said in footnote 2, NASA can’t indulge in pure research, for the silliest of all reasons: politics. For more details, look up “light sail” on the internet.
(4) Calendrical footnote: 2020 the year is itself not part of the 2020’s, the decade. Isn’t that odd? No, not really — there was never a year zero, so the first decade on any calendar is the year 1 through the year 10, leaving 11 to start the next decade. It’s the same misunderstanding that had the entire World celebrating the “millennium” a year early, then ignoring it when the millennium actually did kick over! Just tossing that in, totally to the side.