A dream

I had a dream last night. The dream had no characters or familiar places or faces or belongings. There was no plot nor any confusion. Just a single event which I focused tighter and closer upon as it progressed.


There was a tree, placed in the exact center of a barren valley. The ground was caked mud, heated and cooled until split and cracked and dried out, a chaotic checkerboard pattern stretching to the horizon. Mountains surrounded the valley dramatically and symmetrically, though I did not look directly at them. My eyes were on the tree. The dead tree

The tree had smooth dark brown bark, very gently muscled. It seemed familiar to my eye, but I could not name it now or then. The tree had no leaves anywhere. It's brances stretched outward and upward strong without being brittle. There was one branch that stood out. It was large and stout, almost as big around as the tree, with an ovoid bisection. The brance extended farther upward than any other part of the tree. Slowly, without any visible mechanism or apparatus, a fine line began it divide the branch from the tree very near to the trunk. It was not a saw or knife, but more an incision that seperated and pulled branch from tree, until the limb was completely shorn and freestanding, sturdily in the air some six inches away from its former home.

Then, slowly at first, then quicker, beads of blood developed where sap should have been. The blood thickened and pooled, covering the visible growth rings until it began to drip. At this point the entire scene began to look like a Dali, in that it was very surreal and purely observed, but the colors and tones had the look of painting and art, and now how eyes see. A subtle music built to a climax and ended abruptly, though did not notice it until it had been muted.

I did not wake up. The dream left me and I continued sleeping.

'Blastoff' is not a brand of vodka.

A month ago the Space Shuttle launched (I know I'm late, but I've thought about this a lot) and I was pleased to be able to watch it on television. It kind of disgusted me how as soon as the thing failed to explode, every news channel that had been covering the launch (and every news channel was) switched to something else with more promise for the sensational. Is that the crown jewel of our civilization's accomplishments? Is this where John Kennedy imagined we would be after he promised the moon within a decade - and got it - over four decades ago? I find it hard to understand why the space program has suffered so much in this country. It helped me understand this moment in history when I compared it to something Ron Cliff taught me about Chinese seafaring explorers in the 15th century. The Chinese had developed the best nautical technology in the world and for a short period of time, constructed massive junks to trade wares with peoples all across the Indian Ocean to their west. China was poised to become the trading and colonial powerhouse that Spain was to become a century later. But after peaking in the early 1400s, sailing from China was outlawed on pain of death. What happened? Xenophobia and conservatism at home prevented what might have been. Instead of looking outward, China looked inward and centuries later fell under the imperialist heel itself.

The comparison to modern events I find to be easy to draw. A forward thinking president helps put us on the path to explore other worlds. We have some very early success, and look ready to move on. Then, our exploration fizzles and goes nowhere for a while. The danger is not that space won't get explored - I'm sure that it will in time - the question is who will be the ones to do it if we do not? Ironically enough, the Chinese arguably have the most aggressive space program in the world right now. While we are wringing our hands about chunks of foam killing our astronauts, China's been investing billions - and with encouraging success.

My suggestions for an aggressive space program:

1. Add lots of money. That's a politically unpopular thing I realize, but if they were able to sell the American people the joke of a pretense to invade Iraq, they can marshal public opinion skyward as well. If half the billions we were spending in Iraq went to the space program, we would be able to begin to build an infrastructure that would make it easier and cheaper to get to space. Creating that infrastructure is very expensive on the short term, but without lowering the per-pound cost of getting into orbit by massively increasing our capacity, space will always be distant and expensive.
   
2. Creative massive tax incentives for the industry until the commercial viability of Earth orbit was at a feasible initial capital investment threshold.
   
3. Make it an again issue of national pride. Portray America's space legacy as our gift to the world and to history, telling the world we would rather be astronauts then warriors.

Until it enters the political debate, there's no future in this. The main issue is budgetary I beleive, and the feeling that there is no material gain possible. I think that any significant economic gain would have a lag time of several election cycles, and hence may not be that hot-button issue that gets highlighted so often. I don't believe that there is any political debate over the program other than what fiscal conservatives would say. So it would seem to be a winner for somebody someday... just play that card, eh? I'm growing allergic to gravity.