a is for awesome, b is for badass - o

Woah, dude. Space is only the coolest thing ever. In the history of cool. Except dinosaurs, maybe. Actually, it’s interesting that I find dinosaurs (which are from the past) and space (which is excitingly futuristic) incredibly cool. Wait, I don’t mean interesting, I mean the other thing.

Space, however, is incredibly interesting.

That is putting it mildly. And why bother with that? Space is awesome, super cool and downright magnificent. I’ve always thought that, as far back as I can remember. Maybe it started with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Stars are definitely one of the reasons that space is so effing cool. There’s more, but we’ll kick off with stars.

Stars

Stars are like nature, but times a million. They are nature, I know they’re not unnatural, or supernatural. But they’re way beyond the nature we’re used to. It’s basically life, but not as we know it. And that’s catchy. They are massive, for a start – like mountains, but way huger, and then at the end of their life they can go crazy and eat everything like big, hungry bears or something.

Plus, some of them look like bears. Not individually, they work as a team. Not just bears – some of them are supposed to look like lions and eagles and water goats. And you can use them to navigate if you don’t have gps or a compass or map or whatever. One of them keeps us alive, so they’re pretty handy to have around.

The night sky is one of the most mystifying and inspiring sights, and we all get to see it every time it gets dark. Imagine standing at the water’s edge, looking out across the ocean, wondering what lies on the other side. We can’t really do that anymore, not if we’ve ever seen a map. But we can look up at the sky with the same awe and wonder. And the stuff that’s out there is just terrific – nebulae and supernovas, black holes and gas giants. It’s nature at its most intense and magnificent, so look around you at the ridiculously complex and diverse natural brilliance and think “woah, dude – that’s effing cool” and then look up at the night sky, and think “woah… dude…”

Space Travel   

When I look up at the sky, as well as thinking “woah, dude” I also think “I quite fancy going there” because space travel is one of the very cool reasons that space is so effing cool. This is in no small part due to zero gravity conditions. You can float around like you’re swimming, but not in water. When I’ve dreamt about flying, that’s been what I have imagined. And when you have a cup of tea, it doesn’t just sit there in the cup, it forms spheres and floats around. This has got to get pretty frustrating after a while, but it would still have to be one of the coolest irritations you’re ever going to experience. If something’s going to inconvenience you, it might as well be magic.

Space travel is how travel used to be. Not in the sense that we were all hopping off to Mars in the 15^th Century, but that it is still a massive and heroic undertaking. Like sea travel was in the good old days. When just getting from one town to another meant saddling up the horses and driving for days. That guarantees to make any journey dramatic, which is what is missing from travel today. It’s all too easy – you can fly across the globe in a few hours, and all you need to think about is how to fit all your liquids into a transparent bag, and how to stop your trousers from falling down when you take off your belt to walk through the scanners.

Not in space, though. You have to wear special clothes – like people used to on safari. And you can’t even breathe outside. And sometimes you have to do a spacewalk to fix the engine, and then you have to worry about getting lost in the fullness of space and no-one hearing you scream. That’s hardcore travel. None of your cushioned seating and luggage on wheels.

The Space Race

When I was little I was quite set on becoming a cosmonaut. A cosmonaut, you understand, not an astronaut. Because I was firmly on the side of the Soviet Union. Space and Communism were very important in my early years, which probably explains a lot.

But the Space Race era is just cool, in quintessence. Back when spies were spies and phones were phones and arms races seemed like a good idea. There’s something charming about past ideas of the future – things that used to be futuristic, and now look retro in the extreme. Things like that are great. Much like the mal-constructed dinosaurs at Crystal Palace, space race era visions of our present time give us a brief, illuminating glimpse of how people thought back then.

Perhaps the best of these are the Little Green Men we assume aliens look like. I think it’s probably unlikely that beings from another world look a bit like us but with bigger heads and green skin, but you never know. I could end up looking very silly any moment now. And if little green men (and women, let’s be inclusive) arrive on earth I could look even sillier because as well as the original silly thing I was doing, I’d also be proven wrong about what aliens look like. But either way, if they didn’t eat or enslave you, it’d be pretty awesome to meet an alien.

Not forgetting, we went to the moon. Actual humans from Earth walked on the surface of the moon. They watched their home planet rise over the horizon and looked up at a completely new night sky, still full of the same wonder that had brought them there. Then they planted a flag and played golf, but that’s humans for you.

All the great futuristic stuff like space suits and freeze-dried food is just awesome. Who doesn’t want to write with a zero gravity pen, and eat astronauts’ ice cream even though it burns? Who wouldn’t happily jump into a space suit at a moment’s notice? To be honest, it’s not all ice cream and moonwalking. You have to wear a nappy, and your muscles start to waste in zero gravity. So maybe it wouldn’t be such a great trip, but it sure is tempting.

I’d be up for a trip to the moon, or Mars – I’m not fussy. I’d brave the food and nappies for a chance to stand on the surface of a different world, and watch the earth rise and set. Because the night sky has always filled me with wonder and awe at the vastness of the universe. I look up at the stars and think about the great and terrible marvels of the universe – the extremes of heat and cold, of gas giants and nebulae and I think “Woah, dude, space is frickin’ awesome.”