Get Your Ass to Mars!

I must admit I am in no small amount moved by Elon Musk's fervor to reach Mars by 2025.  I am skeptical of its success, but I am also reminded of what Kennedy said in 1962 on a football field in Texas.

We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, ONE WE ARE UNWILLING TO POSTPONE, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

 This quote remains relevant in the world today because, even in the face of Kennedy's death, we (as human beings) were able to pull together and send men to the moon within that decade.

The political and scientific significance of the actual moon landing is beyond the scope of this blog

There's no small amount of risk in interplanetary travel.  Some have compared it to the overseas travel of the 15th and 16th centuries, but Elon Musk's plan calls for something a bit more concentrated than that.

However, in that context, I've been thinking about some of the ways that people might find themselves on a rocket ship to Mars.  The very real threat of indentured servitude crops up here, since in founding a colony you're going to have a bunch of people who stand to gain quite a bit of land from completing initial contracts and corporate sponsorship is an easy way to cover costs and allow businesses on Earth to profit from the goings-on on Mars.  There is no doubt in my mind that this latter situation (Earth business profiting from Martian investments) is going to happen.

One must wonder what kind of society will be set up on Mars.  By necessity, I think it would likely be established as an 'international colony,' somewhat akin to the international research stations like those in Antarctica and, of course, the ISS.

Humans coming together for science!

The Martian political landscape is quite likely to be discussed thoroughly before its establishment, as humanity enters an age of neocolonialism.  It's impractical, with a 13-minute communication delay and a 2-year physical transportation gap, to remotely govern a Martian colony.  But I'm sure critics in Europe said the same thing about establishing colonies in the Americas where the delays were months-long for both physical transportation and message sending.

The very real promise with the Martian colony is its potential.  This potential has been argued both for and against, and I've seen compelling arguments both ways.  It could be that the "Martian Million" all perish as they attempt to establish a colony there.  But what a step forward it would otherwise be!

Image courtesy of the Curiosity rover

Another concern on Mars is where humans can ethically settle.  There has been water discovered on Mars - all over the damn place.  And while that's great from the point of view of people who are going to need water to live, it's also really frustrating because it presents the possibility for cross-planetary contamination.  Colonization is the fastest way to contaminate things, and the robots that NASA has been sending to Mars have gone through increasingly stringent processes to reduce the amount of Earth that goes to Mars.

What is there to contaminate?  Possibly nothing, but probably something.  Not necessarily microbial life, but there's a good chance of that being the case.  And if it is, then a pure sample will teach us a great deal about the evolutionary process as it applies to life on a universal scale.

Those clean white suits aren't just for style.

I will, and have, made no secret that I want to live (and likely die) on Mars.  I'd love to be one of the Martian Million.  There's no doubt that I could contribute to the Martian society, particularly in the form of entertainment (which they will need up there!)  I have other facts standing against me, though.  I have had a vasectomy, so I cannot effectively contribute to the gene pool of the Martian colony.  In an austere environment, reproductive efficiency is a must.  Although I'm sure reproduction problems will exist to some extent due to stress and other issues that arise from interplanetary travel that we're as yet unfamiliar, I am wholly unable to contribute.  Another fact against me is my legal obligation to my children, which will I will not be relinquished of in enough time to become one of the Martian Million.

I love my children dearly.  As they grow older, my presence in their life fluctuates.  Sometimes I see them quite a bit and sometimes I never see them at all.  Ideally, we could all go to Mars.  But I couldn't make that choice for them, not when going to Mars is this dangerous.  I would miss my children terribly, but I'd live with my choice to go if I could.  I know I could justify my actions to myself, even if I couldn't justify it to them.  Call me selfish, I don't care.  I've dreamt of being an astronaut since I was a child, and I've never stopped dreaming of it.

In the long run, Musk's Mars Million is not about just colonizing Mars and ultimately terraforming it.  It sounds silly to talk about the long-term goals of this mission, but Musk says it all in his mission statement: he wants to make human beings interplanetary.  This starts with what's in our solar system, but stretching out into vast and unknown stretches of time it covers interstellar exploration as well.

There's a reason why, in Star Trek, Mars was the jumping-off point for Starfleet after Earth Space Dock

A Few Thoughts on the Force

I realize this blog has primarily been about Star Trek, but I have other interests and so should you.  In the wake of writing a paper (rather hastily, I'll admit) for a religious studies class I'd like to explore some thoughts I have on the nature of the Force from Star Wars.

The Force is changing.  Or rather, the canonical definition of it is changing somewhat.

The Ashla, the Bogan, and the Bendu

Some of this change is manifested in the Disney XD television show Star Wars Rebels which just entered its third season this last weekend.  (Rather triumphantly, I might add).

Star Wars Rebels (and Dave Filoni's other project, The Clone Wars) has done wonders for expanding the canonical Star Wars universe in wonderfully cinematic ways.  What I appreciate more about Rebels than Clone Wars are the episodes that delve into what it means to be a Jedi (or to wield the Force in general).  Clone Wars does have a few good episodes on this topic as well, but Clone Wars' aim was less about exploring the nature of the Force and more about demonstrating how far off the path of light the Jedi had tread.

The three-part story about Mortis was nothing short of epic

Rebels examines a struggle that might have been played out in the Star Wars cinematic saga had Obi-Wan Kenobi more time to train Luke.  Granted, Obi-Wan was a full Jedi when he met Luke, but the downfall of Vader always made it seem like training a new Jedi was more difficult than it appeared.  Ezra Bridger encounters many of the trials that we don't get to see Luke (or Anakin, for that matter) go through on his way to becoming a Jedi Knight.  Kanan Jarrus is someone who never achieved Knight status.  Both master and apprentice are learning how to use the Force.  This opens their minds to new interpretations.

Not the last of the old Jedi, but the first of the new...

The Force is strange, and rightfully beyond an exact definition.  The definition that Obi-Wan gives Luke is our most solid explanation of what the living Force is and where it comes from, and Yoda reinforces this view.  But there is a duality in the Force which comes from the distinction between the cosmic Force and the living Force.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

The living Force holds within it a connection to all other life forms in the galaxy.  It is very specifically what Yoda and Obi-Wan train Luke to be aware of.  Because life is now, it is the Force of the moment.

Life creates it, makes it grow.

But there are greater powers at play in Star Wars, and this is where the cosmic Force comes into play.  The cosmic Force covers the great galactic currents of time and possibility.  These events vary from the infinitesimally small to the unfathomably large, from the impossibly fast to the epically slow.  The cosmic Force and the living Force are, without a doubt, intertwined.  But it is the cosmic Force that lets a Jedi peer into possible futures or reveal hidden truths from pasts long gone.

In the time of the Grand Galactic Republic, the Jedi believed they were masters of both the living and the cosmic Force.  Darth Sidious came along and proved that they were not.  The Dark side seems to have a peculiar stranglehold on the cosmic Force, and an uncanny ability to blot out visions of the future that would otherwise be readily available to the Jedi.

Difficult to see, the future is.

It is very possible that the reason why the Dark side is so powerful is that, unlike the Light side, the Dark side draws more from the massive wealth of power stored up in the infinite, uncaring cosmos.  So much power, used so readily and channeled through extreme emotions, is certainly enough to spell out one's destruction at the hands of the Force.

This is not to say that the living Force is not its own dearth of power.  Certainly, the Jedi were no trifling opponents in the days of the Grand Galactic Republic.  But, when properly used by a Light-side Force user, it seems to take longer to call upon.  Don't believe me?  Go back and check out how long it took Yoda to pull that X-Wing out of the swamp, and how much effort he put into it.

Judge me by my size, do you?  Well!  You should not!

I believe this is actually because most of what Yoda is doing here is controlling his emotions.  The temptation of the Dark side is always there, and the more you're trying to do with the Force the more the Dark side is likely to tempt you to just use the easy path to get the job done.  For someone like Yoda who believes that "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny," there's no such thing as quickly and easily moving things around with the Force.

Vader just snags it because he doesn't care

But this just takes forever to happen

Now, I'm not an expert.  I might be way off base here.  But that seems pretty reasonable to me so I'll go on to explain why I am so convinced.

In Rebels, the Force training Ezra receives is very personal.  This lets us join him on his path to becoming a Jedi.  The episodic nature of the show means that the lessons Ezra learns can become episodic and focused.  Usually, by the end of an episode, Ezra has made some progress in learning the lesson about the Force he was taught at the start of an episode.

Learning as a team!

Bite-sized chunks are great for understanding the nature of the Force.  They even get Yoda to step in and help out with Ezra's training.  No, Ezra and Kanan don't go to Dagobah, they hear Yoda speak to them through the Force.

Now if this seems weird and nonsensical to you in the context of what I explained about the Dark side's connection to the cosmic Force, that's okay.  You're on the right track, except that Yoda isn't using the cosmic Force to watch over and communicate with these aspiring Jedi.  Instead, Yoda is using the living Force.  Why the living Force?  Because he's seeing things as they happen, which is what the living Force is good at.

Yoda is nothing if not a master at using the living Force.  That's part of why he chose exile on Dagobah.  Everything on that swampy planet is alive, and it has its own Dark side cave that he can watch over as well.

This is the reason why Yoda is able to make a claim like, "long have I watched this one," about Luke and then turn around a day later and tell Luke that "difficult to see, the future is; clouded by the Dark side."

In Star Wars, the present and the future are two distinct domains.  Where the past falls into this is unclear just yet.

But, as I said at the start of this blog, the nature of the Force is changing.

There has been an Awakening...

Star Wars The Clone Wars reintroduced the magic of the Night Sisters of Dathomir, whose powers were previously de-canonized following the made-for-TV movie Ewoks: Battle for Endor.  The Night Sisters of the Clone Wars have a wide array of powers some consider to be... unnatural.  Well, the Night Sisters are distinctly Dark side Force users, so this should come as no surprise.

No, I'm not even going to cover this.

Star Wars Rebels took this one step further in their second season with the introduction of a concept called Ashla.  Ashla was first referenced by an elderly female Lasat named Chava, and she used it as a power to guide the crew of the Ghost to the lost world of Lira San.  Ezra remarks that Ashla sounds an awful lot like the Force.

Well, the Force can go by many names.  Why can't it?  If it's such a ubiquitous power in the galaxy, surely cultures everywhere will have different names for it.

The name Ashla comes from the Expanded Universe world of Tython, where it was one of two moons that helped influence the apocalyptic Force storms that wracked the Jedi home planet.  Its other moon?  Bogan.

Bogan is mentioned in passing by a new character in Star Wars Rebels season three.  The character is known as Bendu, but even this seems to be a bit of a misnomer because he identifies the Light side of the Force as Ashla, the Dark side as Bogan, and himself in between: Bendu.

This... is not a thing.  Not yet, anyway.

Now, the choice of word is interesting because the original title for the Jedi was the Jedi Bendu.  The post-Clone Wars Jedi in the movies seem more concerned about balance than they do specifically about light versus dark.  I'll qualify that last statement in a moment.

But what's most interesting about the character Bendu is that he talks about sight.  Now, Kanan has been blinded and must learn to see using the Force (no, he's not a de facto Miraluka).  But Bendu has a very specific way of phrasing the way he perceives the Force.  He is very clear that the different sides of the Force are as irrelevant and natural as night and day.  To see, one must simply be willing to let go and trust the Force.

No! Do.  Or do not.  There is no try.

Why is this a change?  Because the Sith and Jedi have relied on the cosmic and living Force as individual domains to accomplish their goals previously.  According to Bendu, sight has no bearing on light or darkness when one uses the Force.  Potentially, if Yoda could get past his dogma (he can't) he would be able to see the future that the Dark is trying to hide from him.

Now back to my assertion that Yoda and Obi-Wan are more interested in balance than the actual Light-side: the only Force users in the known galaxy during the Rebellion era are Darth Vader, the Emperor, and Luke.  Since Darth Vader and the Emperor were both decidedly evil, Yoda and Obi-Wan are convinced that Luke needs to be twice as good to make up for all the evil.

No pressure, right?  (Yeah, well Luke said fuck that, if I'm good and I can get my dad to be at least half good we'll be set.)

This, to me, really supports the assertion that the cosmic Force is kind of big and powerful and ambivalent to the living Force.  According to Bendu, the Force itself cannot be good or evil, it can only be used for good or evil.  Easy peasy and we didn't need some nonsensical code that looks like it was written by a middle school kid trying to make a cool Star Wars thing canon.  (I'm looking at you, Grey Jedi).

Serenity and peace are the same thing, dumbshits.

This also fits in well with why Rey was suddenly capable of using the Force the way she did.  If she was able to tap into the cosmic Force better than those around her, she'd be particularly potent in her implementation of the Force.  Since her awakening happened through a vision of the past and possibly the future, it is very reasonable that this made her a conduit for the cosmic Force.  Although she might well have used all that power for the Dark side (Snoke sure wants all that power for himself) she chose not to follow that path.

Dis mah mad face

But, like Bendu, Rey maintained a strong link with the cosmic Force.  Truly the first of the New Jedi, Rey brandishes the Force with all the emotion she earned by being tortured then watching Han and Finn get cut down.  And at the end of the day, she still walks the good path.

What Rey teaches us, what the old Jedi fail to teach us, is that emotions aren't bad.  They just need to be understood and directed.

Steven Universe and the IDIC

I stay away from websites like Tumblr.  I have a Tumblr account I don't use, but I won't even go near Tumblr for the same reason I won't go near League of Legends: the hostile "friendly community."  I will grant that a good amount of Tumblr isn't vitriol - what isn't I get the highlights of in screenshots on my Facebook and Twitter feeds and that's good enough for me.

Really?

Tumblr catches my ire in particular because of its focus on fandoms.  That can be such a negative word these days.  Fandom.  To rhyme with lavatory attendant.

I have ranted before about the dark side of fandom.  It didn't have any particular focus.  So I'll grab on something that's recently come to my attention about one of my favorite fandoms.

In a purified vein of the IDIC there is a cartoon show called Steven Universe.  Steven Universe is a member of a team of alien warriors who protect the Earth from hostile aliens of the same species.  But Steven requires that none of his teammates do so by killing.

Steven is a hugely inclusive show, with intentional normativity in its inclusiveness.  The aliens are, with one notable exception, all female.  So when they develop relationships with each other they are not human hetero relationships.

Mind you, they're not human relationships at all.

Human relationships wish they were this good.

The team who works on Steven Universe has been pretty open with sharing their work in the past (within legal constraints) because they're proud of what they do.  They should be, they make a good, compelling product.

My kids can watch a show about a goofy fat kid with magic powers but also learn about how complex interpersonal relationships and communication are.  This show is so powerful it still helps me deal with the emotions I have regarding my divorce.

I'm not crying, there's something in my eye.... oh, who am I kidding?

I cannot pontificate enough about the superiority of this show.  It's witty and deep and it will speak to your inner child and your struggling, confused adult.

Greg is doing his best, but let's be honest it's hard enough raising a kid without magic powers.

Tumblr is full of kids who want everything to be socially equal.  That's a laudable dream, it's even at the core of the IDIC and a good deal of what is actually depicted in Steven Universe.  But these kids, who have come to be known by the now pejorative term "Social Justice Warriors" take things too far.  Especially when it comes to fandom.

A storyboard artist for Steven Universe quit Twitter because of harassment from these fans.  The subject?  The fans didn't like the way the show was developing the relationships between three characters.

Peridot is a recent addition to the Crystal Gems

Fairly new to the show, Peridot has struggled to fit in with her new friends, the Crystal Gems (Steven and his family of alien warriors).  She is outgoing but awkward because Earth culture is new to her.  She made an attachment with one of the primary Crystal Gem characters in order to help her fit in.

Amethyst is the youngest Crystal Gem (besides Steven) and normally the most laid back

Amethyst, unlike the other two Crystal Gems, was able to get along with Peridot because she has a great sense of humor.  She had maybe a couple episodes where Peridot and Amethyst developed their friendship.  Mostly they were concerned with stopping a giant monster from consuming the Earth.

But there's also Lapis Lazuli

Lapis Lazuli is the catalyst for all of the problems the Crystal Gems have been facing in the show.  She has a troubled past, and is constantly brooding.  Because she wanted to leave Earth, she drew attention to the Crystal Gems from their home world (named, incredibly, Homeworld).

Lapis Lazuli couldn't return to Homeworld after preventing an evil gem from completing her mission of destroying the Crystal Gems and allowing the Earth to be destroyed.  With nowhere to go, she shacked up with Peridot.

There are paragraphs to write about Lapis Lazuli and what she means to the show, but they're not relevant to this argument.

All the metaphors for unhealthy relationships

Now, as a pretty open-minded person who doesn't try to read too much into things it seems like all three of these characters have reasonable platonic relationships with each other.  They are close, as friends are.  They all desire companionship, but all of them aren't well-enough adjusted with themselves to seek out romantic relationships.

I italicized the words "storyboard artist" earlier, so I'll get to my point and justify that now.  I'm not going to say that a storyboard artist has no creative input on the way the show goes, but her job is generally input as far as presenting the sequences in the way that best captures the story cinematically.  They don't sit around and decide who's screwing who, especially in a children's television show.

It's goddamn ridiculous that fans would target her as the focus of their anger and vitriol.  These kids are out of control.

But more importantly, Steven wouldn't approve of that kind of behavior at all.

Lauren Zuke, the artist who left Twitter, tweeted that life exists outside of Steven Universe.

Kind of crazy that she would even have to tweet that.

But if you don't believe Lauren for whatever reason then really you need to be asking yourself whether or not Steven would accept you as a Crystal Gem for behaving that way.  Yeah, we're all different.  But that doesn't mean we have to be different kinds of jerks.

The show is about hope, humanity, and love.  It's about love that transcends simple binary relationships and undermines our perception of love as a road to sexual gratification.  It's about real, honest love.

It's about Pearl's unrequited love for Rose Quartz

It's about Ruby's love for Sapphire

It's about connecting across cultural gulfs

It's about finding freedom in your love for each other...

...even though it acknowledges that most love is fleeting.

It's never about who is with whom.  If it was, we wouldn't have met

Sugilite

Opal

Sardonyx

and Alexandrite.

In fact, in every episode where the characters are concerned with who's in love with whom, someone inevitably gets hurt.  It's like the writers of the show are trying to tell us something.  Huh.

As far as Lauren Zuke is concerned, even if she does have any creative control over the relationships of the characters try celebrating her art instead of trying to direct it.

Peridot isn't ready for a real relationship with anyone anyway

Remember that, whatever your fandom, nobody likes a backseat driver.  Feedback is cool.  Hate isn't.

Explorer's Log: Day One

I pre-ordered No Man's Sky.

Five minutes into the game, I was already dead.

It turns out that there's a steep learning curve to No Man's Sky.  Not too steep, but definitely a "here's your game - by the way I think tutorials are for idiots" kind of steep.  I re-named my starting planet Kakrafoon (an homage to Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and set off to figure out just what the hell I was doing and where the hell I was going.

When you start off in No Man's Sky, your rad space ship is mad broken.  It's up to you to fix it.

Fortunately they soon gave me this bad boy, straight from Star Fox's hangar.

You get only a few inventory spaces and some context clues to help you figure out where to go.  Fortunately the actual activity isn't that hard (even if it is time consuming).

And flight leads to cool views like this one.

Your liftoff engines are criminally inefficient for what the game demands.  They only use Plutonium (which is supposed to be uncommon as a resource, but that varies from planet to planet), and they use up 25% of your fuel supply every time you take off.  If there's an upgrade for those puppies to make them more efficient I have yet to find it.

The first planet I was on was a frozen wasteland.  I was happy to leave.

And excited for all the pretty colors in warp travel!

Warp travel was a hassle to get going.  Little did I know it would be my downfall.

You see, you can find crashed ships sometimes while you're exploring.

Like this sad wreck.

While I chose to skip the above pictured derelict, I did find another that was far more appealing than the bonus content Arwing that Happy Games had gifted me.  It was banged up, but then so was my first ship so I didn't think much of spending a little extra time exploring enough to fix it up.

And it was red.  Red means go faster.

My new ship did lack something the Arwing had: fuel in its warp engine.  My only goal from the game at this point was to leave behind the second star system that I had come to and get on with my journey towards the center of the galaxy.

I have spent quite a bit of time looking for the components I need to power my warp drive, but to no avail.

Lots of carbon-based trees, though.

I have bounced from planet to planet in this star system trying to find what I need, but I fear I may have stranded myself.

This communication station didn't have what I needed, even though it was cool as hell.

Resigned somewhat to my fate, I began to explore what I had in earnest.  I am resolute in my belief that the commodities I need to escape this star system will come my way.

I made a friend with this weird praying mantis creature.  She pooped platinum for me.

My travels took me pretty far, and I've already unlocked the silver achievement for walking around on foot in No Man's Sky.

One thing I will say about the game is that it tends to overuse the word "unit."  Everything is measured in units.  Everything.  You walk in units.  Your speed is measured in units.  You get paid in units.  It's all units.  Confusing.

A cozy housing unit only twenty units away from a cave filled with Plutonium!  300 square units!

Knowing that I didn't have a functional warp drive, I opted for a better ship when I found it.  I wasn't really losing anything at that point - the ship that I had found was less aesthetically appealing but it had more cargo capacity and boasted a number of (broken) systems that even my current ship did not have.

Like an R2-D2 built right into the wing!

I didn't just wander around blowing up rocks and scanning animals, though.  I also pursued as much information on the local dominant species as I could, the Gek.  Well, here's what I can tell you about the Gek: their First Spawn are straight up assholes.  Everywhere I go there are death threats and promises of galactic conquest from those First Spawn dick weasels.

But at least they have the common courtesy to teach me their language.

I have collected more than 30 words of the Gek language, but whenever I talk to one of these sardonic unhelpful little lizard people I still get mostly garbled sentences.  I can't wait until I learn the Gek word for "is," or maybe "the."

The trade was also good.

There were always plenty of minerals to grab.  Often, more than it's worth carrying around with you.  Especially when you find duplicate, non-stackable trinkets that sell for a quarter of what a good stack of Elenium will sell for on the Galactic Trade Network.

That is a two-hundred unit tall pillar of pure gold.

I'm still poking about on those four planets (one of which I was so frustrated with that I renamed it Bullshit).  The irony will be when the planet Bullshit is the last one I finish exploring and it has what I need.  Hopefully I didn't break something by taking one of the many awesome ships they provided me in the early game.

Hopefully I'm just stranded until the game decides to actually give me the antimatter I seek.

Hopefully.