100YSS: My Fire Relit

After living in Shanghai a few years I found out about Xinchejian, the city's first hackerspace, and from that I found out about the 100 Year Starship Project. By the way, despite the word 'hacker,' a hackerspace really is a positive thing. Here's a definition:

A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art (but also in many other realms) can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. Hackerspaces can be iewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things

Thanks, Wikipedia!

The 100 Year Starship project once again made me a believer that I could do something to help get humanity into space. Here was DARPA, a large institution, offering a grant of $500,000 to further the dream of getting humanity to the stars. They were the group that invented the internet and worked on all manner of cool new tech for the US Government. And they had faith this could be done.

Though I was late to the party, my fire was rekindled by the proposal submitted to DARPA by Ricky Ng Adam and others: in short, hackerspaces working together to push forward the frontiers of mankind in space.

It turns out that proposal wasn't accepted. Icarus Interstellar, with their concept of an interstellar fusion drive won in the end. I fully believe they're a worthy choice and we'll do everything we can to support them in their efforts.

However, I also believe hackerspaces (and by extension, people like myself) have a part to play. Passionate makers, artists, engineers, hackers, community builders and, hell, humanity as a whole are ideally placed to realise our destiny in the stars, and this provides a democratic, egalitarian vision of what space can be. It used to be about governments, then it moved onto private industry (like Virgin Galactic, SpaceshipOne, et al).

Yesterday's Tomorrow: A Fire Extinguished

Growing up in the UK, one book that made really made an impression on my younger self was The Usborne Book of the Future. Published in 1979, it came from a time when the future seemed wide open, and I remember obsessing over personal robots, jetpacks, meals in pill form and flying cars for everyone. In short, every geeky kid's dream.

The details are now hazy, but one thing that stuck in my mind was that within a few years I could be relaxing on one of the moons of Jupiter while robots did all the chores. Knowing that was a big comfort when my parents made me do the washing up. But it wasn't just my laziness talking. The thought of exploring a new frontier really lit a fire inside me. It spoke to something deep down -- something primal.

A few years later on I got into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Again I saw a vision of the future, a future that I wanted so badly to happen. I would daydream for hours about transporters, replicators, androids and the awesome power of being able to speak to anyone by tapping a badge on my chest. But what really stoked my fire was exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no-one had gone before.

Years passed. Eventually I ended up in China (I suppose due to that "exploring the frontiers" mentality) and working in real estate. By now that fire that burned in my youth was just a smoldering heap of ash. I'd seen too many promises broken. Flying cars were too dangerous. The only jetpack I ever saw was in a James Bond movie. And guzzling down pills for food was just impractical. Besides, there was real life to get on with: Finding a job, climbing the career ladder, getting married, thinking of kids. Who had time to think about those broken promises of the future?

While the embers of that fire still had heat, I had long extinguished all hope of actually doing something about getting myself, or anyone else, into space. By then it was just a pipe dream. Come on, if the governments of the world hadn't been able to get anyone else to the moon since 1972, what hope was there for the rest of us?

To be continued...