Against the Wall
Today, we went to the Franklin Institute, which is the local science museum. I finally caved to Daniel's repeated pleas to be taken to the planetarium and bought a membership sometime this summer and now we go all the time. Today the children spent a good twenty minutes parading in and out of the giant heart and I nearly destroyed all vestibular balance by spinning on this disc meant to simulate ice skating spins. It took me a while to be able to walk straight again. We also listened to a guy talk about his trip to the International Space Station. But not an astronaut, no (although don't tell Daniel that). A tourist. A space tourist.
He gave quite an interesting talk about the process of preparing to go into space and showed videos of himself on the station which were a couple of steps above Aunt Gertie and Uncle Pete's slides of their trip to the Grand Canyon but still in the same camp. And he paid (sit down, if you're not already) 28 million dollars to spend a week at the ISS. He flew with the Russians, because NASA apparently doesn't let civilians fly in the Shuttle and spent months training before blasting off. In fact, he sold his business to fund his jaunt.
I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand, if this is your life's dream and you can make it come true, why not. And the ISS project could use the money. And there's clearly more than one person willing to spend the money since there's a space tourist pretty much every trip and the competition for places is fierce. So why not? Live the dream!
But this is right up there with those (insane) tourist climbers who think that Everest sounds like a nice place for a hike and spend months and their life savings to get up there, losing nerve endings, limbs or lives in the process. Heck, I've read Into Thin Air. It's not fun and games. What is it about that lets us even consider such endeavors within our reach? Why do they need to be?
And also on the other hand, twenty-eight million dollars.
Twenty. Eight.
Million.
For a week's adventure holiday.
Can't you just hear Nero fiddling? I can smell the smoke from here.
He gave quite an interesting talk about the process of preparing to go into space and showed videos of himself on the station which were a couple of steps above Aunt Gertie and Uncle Pete's slides of their trip to the Grand Canyon but still in the same camp. And he paid (sit down, if you're not already) 28 million dollars to spend a week at the ISS. He flew with the Russians, because NASA apparently doesn't let civilians fly in the Shuttle and spent months training before blasting off. In fact, he sold his business to fund his jaunt.
I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand, if this is your life's dream and you can make it come true, why not. And the ISS project could use the money. And there's clearly more than one person willing to spend the money since there's a space tourist pretty much every trip and the competition for places is fierce. So why not? Live the dream!
But this is right up there with those (insane) tourist climbers who think that Everest sounds like a nice place for a hike and spend months and their life savings to get up there, losing nerve endings, limbs or lives in the process. Heck, I've read Into Thin Air. It's not fun and games. What is it about that lets us even consider such endeavors within our reach? Why do they need to be?
And also on the other hand, twenty-eight million dollars.
Twenty. Eight.
Million.
For a week's adventure holiday.
Can't you just hear Nero fiddling? I can smell the smoke from here.
posted by Francesca Amendolia at 18:50
4 Comments:
I can not even imagine having that kind of money ... or the motivation to go into space ... wow!
The heart sounds so cool!
I think maybe if you had that much money, and could afford pretty much anything that money can buy, the untasted thrills remaining to you would be scarce. So the moon, sure, why not. Still seems petty, though. Imagine all the good that money could have done on earth. Oh well, I suspect I'll never have those sorts of moral dilemmas, feed the hungry or see the moon, as it is we're just paying the bills and hoping we're not working as Wal-mart greeters and eating cat food when we're old.
No kidding. As my daughter once said when she was around one and a half, and someone had lit a cig behind her, "I mell moke!"
sigh...
i just want enough to pay
my oil bill....
heh.
:)
28 million.
ack.
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