A semester long project in college, The Infinite Begone is a series of five micro-stories based on the question of what if humans never engaged in space exploration.
Entry 1: Small Step Backwards
With annual spending data, a more refined inflation-adjustment can be calculated using (…) inflation indices. In 2020 dollars — the most recent completed fiscal year at the time of writing — Apollo would cost an equivalent $257 billion dollars.
Casey Dreier, An Improved Cost Analysis of the Apollo Program
It was Veteran’s Day of 1986 at Dawson High School in the small town of the same name in Ohio. I remember it was that year very clearly, as Ferris Bueller came out just a few months prior and my girlfriend would not stop talking about it. The day was overcast and the trees across town had already shed their leaves, the streets orange and brown, the colors blowing in the breeze as the school buses passed by.
Our school was having a special event for the holiday, called it ‘Meet Your Heroes’ or something like that. A handful of vets came to visit and we all had to interview at least one of them and write an essay about their time as a soldier or pilot or what have you. There were some really old guys from the Second World War, younger ones from Nam, and right in the middle were the ones that fought in Korea. I wasn’t surprised that all the Marines and Army guys got most of the attention, especially the ones that were open enough to show his scars or what was under his eye-patch. It left me with very few options of who I should interview, but there was still one man there who hardly any other student spoke to.
This man had well-combed hair and hardly a scratch on him. I think most of the other students mistook him for some sort of supervisor with the school, but I could tell from his eyes he was eager to say something to someone. He had something to share that the rest could not offer, so I approached him. He was taking a sip from a paper cup of water as he saw me, quickly lowering it back down when he realized I wanted to talk to him.
“Morning, champ. It’s a great pleasure to meet you,” the man said as he firmly took my hand and shook it. As he greeted me, I saw his name tag sticker over his breast pocket which read Lieutenant Neil Armstrong.
“You too, sir. I mean, Lieutenant. So, can I ask you a few questions for my paper?”
“Sure, that’s why I’m here.” He and I sat down across from each other at one of the cafeteria tables. I didn’t even need to ask all that much before he gave me basically everything I needed for a rather decent report. A pilot in Korea who became a pilot for experimental aircraft after the war for twenty years. He told me all about the heights he reached, the way he could see the edge of the Earth itself and the sun just beyond it. Even with his extraordinary tales, I wasn’t prepared for what he said next.
“You know, I almost flew to the moon…”
“Huh? When was this?”
“Did they ever teach you about the Apollo Program, son?” I shook my head no.
“Ah, well, ask your father about it. There was a, let’s call it a competition the States had with the Soviets back in the fifties to see who could put a man on the moon first. The Space Race? This sound familiar at all?”
“I maybe saw it in a textbook once, but I thought it never happened?”
“That’s right, it didn’t. You see, the Program never got the funding or public support it needed. It was deemed a failed venture and it was dissolved before sixty-five. I think the Soviets figured out the same thing.”
“Well, what was it for? Why were you trying to go? Is there something on the Moon we should know about?” I asked Lieutenant Armstrong, part of me starting to think he might be talking out of his backside by this point.
“No, it was… It was because we could. We had the man power and the most brilliant of minds who could have figured it out back then. When I was selected, I dreamed every night about going up there, waiting for the day that would never arrive.”
“…do you still dream of it?”
“Oh yes, sometimes. I wish I could have gone but, well, I’m still happy with what I’ve done. Maybe one day, you can pick up where I left off, hmm?” I didn’t know what else to say to him. I never thought about going to the moon in a literal way until now. Is that something people should think about? It sounded crazy to even comprehend what it would take to do something like that.
I thanked Lieutenant Armstrong for his time as my class’ time slot was ending and another group of students entered. When I turned in my paper, my teacher Mr. Salino put a big red circle around where I mentioned that Lieutenant Armstrong almost went to the moon.
“Be sure to put direct hyperbole as a quote,” said the note next to it.
Entry 2: When No One’s Around
The common approach to CBA defines costs and benefits in terms of their values in market transactions, measured in units of money. However, many phenomena that we value are not exchanged in markets. They include such things as ecosystem services such as clean air and water, the existence of ecosystems even in the absence of any human use thereof, and our own lives.
Seth D. Baum, Cost–benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations
I’ve read about an apparently common expression that people say. It goes, “If a tree falls in the forest when there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” It was my understanding that expressions like these are supposed to be a metaphor for something or have some irony to it, but this one was always curious to me.
First off, why does it matter? Is the idea of a tree falling so consequential that it must make itself known with a sound? Or is the sound itself the important part? Is someone keeping a record of whenever a tree falls? Second, what makes a sound? That is, what do people who say this define as a sound? Medically speaking, I can’t hear a damn thing, yet I know I’ve heard a tree fall before.
There was a forest in NorCal I would visit every fall when the weather was good, before an uncontrollable forest fire swallowed it up into nothing. Go there now and you’ll find the grass and the saplings starting to make things back to the way it was, but that will be way after I’m gone. I wonder sometimes what can be done to know where the wildfires are going and how fast they are spreading. That forest was home to more than trees, so it’s hard for me to think about going back there to find solace.
But I still remember the one time I got the answer to that saying. I was at my usual spot, an open and largely unused camping area, far enough away from the main road that I knew no one would bother me. I set my blanket on the dirt and roots and lied on my back, staring up into the tree canopy and the shifting sky beyond it. From sundown to sunset, I watch it all change before me. Even if I can’t hear the wind in the trees, I feel it all around me. Even if I can’t hear the sun radiating on me, I feel it all around me. Even if I can’t see beyond the blue veil of the sky, I feel it all around me.
I always watch the moon just leave for the horizon, the sun comes up and over me, and the stars eventually come out as the sky turns black. Sometimes, if I focus hard enough, I can see the other stars even when the sun is out. In that meditative state of concentration, I start to think about whether or not our star would be visible from a planet out there. Is someone thinking about our sun on some nameless world in my peripheral vision? Hell, If I was doing this on the moon, what would that look like? Being able to see the entire Earth around me, the ground, trees, and sky all at once, that’s the sort of thing that makes me think.
Then my concentration broke. The ground beneath me suddenly vibrated instantly. I first thought it may have been an earthquake, but it subsided almost as quickly as it started. I looked around to see some birds flying away from a spot just down the hill from me. I decided to get up for once and look elsewhere, down the hill at the rest of the forest. There it was, an old rotten tree, folded in on itself two feet off the ground, the branches still shaking from the fall. There was the answer.
Entry 3: Illegal Dreams
As the private sector increasingly ventures into space — through companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic — 65% of Americans believe NASA should still play a vital role in the exploration of space, while a third (33%) say private companies will ensure enough progress in this area even without NASA’s involvement.
“Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the U.S. Remain a Global Leader in Space” via Pew Research Center
I heard it thump against my screen door. 9:26 in the morning, 15 minutes late but exactly 15 as always, which is somehow impressive. I grab my Piggly Wiggly mug filled with black coffee as I open my side door, blocking Dasher from dashing out as labradors tend to do. He’s getting older, but he still won’t hesitate to leave through an open door if given the chance. I pick up the newspaper, bound by green rubber bands, and bring it to the table just as my bagels finish toasting.
I unbind the paper and my eyes are drawn to the bold headline, as intended.
“CONGRESS PASSES TERRESTRIAL HOMELAND ACT”
So that’s the end of that saga. For the past three years, the news has been keeping tabs on The Jules Verne Disaster and its aftermath. In the summer of 1994, years of development by the company Starventure, the space machine called The Jules Verne was completed. Starventure was the first company that sought to leave Earth and fly around the Moon and back. On its maiden voyage, The Jules Verne carried 12 researchers, 6 crew members, and 25 tourists, including 4 children. They left the launch pad off the coast of California, the eyes and ears of the world watching. Thirty minutes later, as the craft was supposed to leave the atmosphere, it lost contact with the ground. Eventually the news started to spread of a meteor that crashed in the middle of Mongolia, but it was no meteor.
Lawsuits and fines followed. Starventure was dissolved. Churches and lawmakers equally thought The Jules Verne Disaster was an omen, a sign that man was never meant to leave his birth place. Interviews on the radio broadcasted Americans who believed that there was nothing for us out in space, rhetoric then repeated by politicians. So came the drafting of the Terrestrial Homeland Act.
I kept reading the details on the front page. Congress declared “The United States of America is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, and the responsible stewardship of its terrestrial homeland” in the act.
“The United States shall prohibit all forms of space travel, including but not limited to human missions, satellite launches, and space exploration activities beyond Earth’s atmosphere.”
I sip my coffee as I turn to the sports column. I do wonder how long this will last. What happened to The Jules Verne was tragic, but so was the Titanic, and people still go on cruises. I guess if some millionaire decides the act goes against his constitutional right to explore the stars, then maybe change will come. Maybe then someone can do it right.
Entry 4: Paperweight
Because it occurred in an era with modern consumer electronics, field sensors, and laboratory techniques, unprecedented measurements were made of the impact event and the meteoroid that caused it. Here, we document the account of what happened, as understood now, using comprehensive data obtained from astronomy, planetary science, geophysics, meteorology, meteoritics, and cosmochemistry and from social science surveys. A good understanding of the Chelyabinsk incident provides an opportunity to calibrate the event, with implications for the study of near-Earth objects and developing hazard mitigation strategies for planetary protection.
From the abstract of “Chelyabinsk Airburst, Damage Assessment, Meteorite Recovery, and Characterization”
Of all the places I was anticipating I’d be an exchange student in, Russia was not at the top of the list. Having taken Russian as my Foreign Language class on a whim though really limited my options. The fact that I was approved for the fall semester only adds to the dread, the frigid weather a far cry from the sunny Los Angeles I’m accustomed to.
After the day-long flight I landed in Chelyabinsk, just north of the Kazakh border. I was still a week early before classes started at the university, so I had no choice but to stay at a small hotel called Lovets Snov with another one of the exchange students from Newark named Tristan. Tristan mostly kept to himself and was out doing something in town most days, so I didn’t see him that much except for when we’d turn in for the night in our condensed bunk bed. The room we stayed in had an awkwardly slanted roof, the older building doing its best to accommodate the recent refurbishments. While the room had all the modern amenities one could ask for, there was one piece in particular that I still can’t get out of my head.
On a little crochet blanket was a black rock, rough with a hint of shine to it. It’s pocked with round imprints like fingerprints on its surface, but it’s not malleable enough to be marked by human hands. A cool rock as a decoration is not uncommon, but I know my rocks. As a geology major, I’ve seen so many specimens both in images and with my own eyes.
I found myself looking at it at least once a day, pondering it. Obsidian? No, it’s too metallic. Augite? No, it’s not that either. I tried to call my professor from last semester, hoping that maybe talking to an expert would clear things up for me, but the service wasn’t good enough there. All I could do for days on end was look at it and wonder what it was.
I was fascinated with it. Something about it was drawing my eye constantly, magnetically. It is a magnetic mineral, I checked. Odds are it’s a man-made art piece from scrap iron, but no knick-knack has moved me the same way this thing did.
The move-in date was approaching, so I had no other choice than to ask the hotel staff directly. They might think I was a crazy American asking about the weird rock. Maybe they didn’t even know it was there and it was trash left by a previous visitor that was too heavy to deal with. Even if it only led to embarrassment, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep at night without knowing what that thing was.
The night before I left, after everything was packed and ready to move to the dormitories, I finally went down and asked the man at the front desk about it. He had a bushy beard and jet black hair, a typical Russian look that I was expecting to see a lot of while I was here.
“Excuse me, sir? What is the rock in my room?” I asked in my poorly-accented Russian as clearly as I could. He smacked his lips and raised an eyebrow.
“There’s a rock in your room?”
“It’s big and black on the table,” I explained further. He leans back and repeats “Da” to himself.
“It’s an angel rock!”
“What’s that?”
“It came from Heaven a decade ago, bright and thundering with the power of God. It landed in the lake and a friend pulled it out. He gave me some pieces for the rooms to bless you all. Pray to it, if you want.” After a week of discerning, pondering, and researching, it was a disappointing answer. An art piece in the end.
Entry 5: The Highest Step In The World
Man will never conquer space. He may live in it, but he will never conquer it. The sky above is void and very black, and very hostile.
Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr. to ground controllers while falling 102,800 feet over New Mexico on Aug. 16, 1960.
Once more, Joseph stands on a gondola twenty miles above the surface of the Earth. It’s easy to think of something being twenty miles away from you horizontally, but how often do we think about twenty miles below or above us? We can look up and see twenty miles, but would we be able to pinpoint exactly where that marker is in the expansive blue void above?
Joseph gazed out from his balloon-suspended contraption, the silence broken only by his own breath and the buzzing of blood flowing through his skull. The weather is perfect for the third attempt at testing the military-grade parachute, he thinks, but also to set the new record for the longest parachute fall. This jump had been the goal of many a thrill-seeker for nearly a century, going from a few thousand feet to where Joseph is at now.
All that was before this one lone man, above the entire world, was blue and white, the darkest shades peering directly above him. Through his visor, he could just make out starlight piercing through that void iris- a sight that he, alone, is given the chance to observe. After a brief moment of admiration, he looks to the horizon once more. The edge curves distinctly on all sides, the haze of distant storms and his still meager altitude preventing Joseph from seeing further, into the never-ending beyond. That was a fine trade off in his eyes, though, because he knew he had the clearest view of the Earth’s spherical curve that anyone could hope to see.
Maybe when they make a better balloon or a better protection suit, someone in the future might be able to see more of it, to truly observe and appreciate the details as the curve becomes sharper and the edge more defined- but even so, Joseph knew that no one was ever going to see the Earth’s entire radius.
Afterall, why would they? What maniac would travel so far above Earth so as to basically leave it behind? Would such a person even be able to comprehend looking down at everything, all that humanity ever did, does, and will do, within their peripheral vision? At that point, Joseph thought, such a person would perhaps break away from humankind entirely as they leave the Earth. When you become a speck in space, so far from the safety of home, away from everyone you’ve ever known, without ground beneath your feet or air to breathe freely, then what are you? An explorer? A daredevil? Or just plain stupid?
The moon started to rise over the curved edge of the sky, its white face peeking over the horizon as it prepared to begin its nightly orbit around the planet. The light tugged him out of his thoughts. Joseph had seen enough and his oxygen tank was limited. With one last look into the vast expanse above him, he stepped off the gondola and plunged into the clouds below. He was ready to go home.