Daddy, are we there yet?

By Joseph Walther

Today, I can fly non-stop, from Philadelphia to San Diego in four to five hours, depending on flying conditions. Back in 1963, I drove it in a 1956 Chevy while pulling a 38-foot house trailer attached to the automobile by nothing more than a bumper hitch. Only stopping for an occasional two-hour nap, it took me 5-days. I was only 21-years old. I was also an idiot. I had no idea that a bumper hitch could NOT handle that big a load. Regardless, I made it, thus proving that ignorance is bliss and that luck is an integral part of staying alive.

When my mother found out about it, she sent me psychiatric get-well cards for 6-months. Had my father been alive, get-well cards would have been useless because he would have killed me. Most others, however, just shrugged and chalked it up to the “power of ignorance,” an idea that’s based on some idealistic notion that not knowing something’s impossible to do, makes its doing possible. While there are times when this may be true, it’s, more often, not.

I was searching my radio dial the other day when I came across a talk-radio host and a caller “discussing” space travel. The caller was making the point that “we” should be funding manned space exploration beyond our solar system. The radio host’s point was that the caller was a moron.

I’m not much on slinging insults at people. Unless, of course, it involves the jerk who invented that clear plastic wrap that statically wraps itself around your forearm whenever you tear a section off.

This particular caller may BE a moron. On the other hand, most people have no concept of the term, light-year. The caller struck me as just another person who cannot understand how big 6-trillion is. A light-year is a distance measurement and 6-trillion (6,000,000,000,000), in nice round numbers, is the number of miles involved.

The caller wanted us to go outside of our galaxy. The nearest one to us is Andromeda, a mere hop, skip, and jump of 2,000,000 light-years. A manned mission would involve a craft similar to our space shuttle, but capable of really hauling butt, at least to the tune of 85% the velocity of light.

Someday, maybe, if we survive long enough. Right now, though, our present level of technology makes the average orbital shuttle velocity about 18,000 MPH. Assuming that the thing’s structural integrity and fuel capacity could make the trip; it would take about 76-billion years (76,000,000,000) to get there. Double that if we plan on returning.

Let me break this to you as gently as I can. Our Sun, along with planet EARTH, has an estimated remaining lifespan of about 4.5-billion years, unless George Bush finds a way to stay in office another term, in which case it could be considerably less.

Our galaxy has an estimated diameter of about 100,000 light-years. That comes to, um…carry the 2 and, WOW, 600 quadrillion miles (600,000,000,000,000,000). The estimated diameter of the whole cosmos, as far as we can see, is 30-billion light-years. Aaaag! Forget it. My head is going to explode.

These numbers are meaningless. The concept of intergalactic travel was great in Star Trek. But, so was Counselor Troy, a genuine hottie, well worth the risk, at least in my estimation, of letting someone beam my butt around the universe. In reality, though, there’s no such thing as warp speed and the thought that there could be…someday, is pure speculation.

Here’s an idea. Let’s put manned deep space travel on the back burner, at least until we figure out how to get out of Iraq. Perhaps we could even try to figure out how to make sure that everyone has adequate health insurance coverage. Oh, yes, it’s also probably a good idea to make sure we’re not prematurely destroying our species through some of our hair brained environmental screw-ups. And, as a side project, we should spend a bit more time and effort on improving our educational system.

In fact, I can think of lots of other things we need to worry about ahead of getting our backsides to Andromeda and back. Or to Mars, for that matter!

But, as I said above, I would not have insulted that caller the way the radio host did. Yeah, the caller was a dumb ass for making such ridiculous statements. But, the least the radio host should have done was explain the galactic math involved. On the other hand, maybe he couldn’t do galactic arithmetic, either. I’ll bet he’s the same one who invented that clear plastic wrap that statically wraps around your forearm whenever you tear some off. What an idiot!

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.