Thursday, April 14, 2011

Reader Request: Spaceships

I don't know what it's like at your house, but around here, it's whatever Jim wants, Jim gets. So I'm most happy to pander to one of my few readers and oblige his request that I write a post about "spaceships," as he so eloquently put it. Well, here goes.

Where to start? There's a lot of angles to this one. A lot of ins, a lot of outs, so to speak. But instead of making grand claims about broad topics and stuff I don't know about like I usually do, I'm going to write about my personal experience with spaceships, which is fairly extensive. Here goes.

When I was a youngin', whenever I saw a commercial on Nickelodeon or an ad in one of my Boy Scout magazines for Space Camp, I was like, man, I really want to go to Space Camp.

I never went to Space Camp.

Then, I saw an ad for a model rocket kit, and I was like, I want that. So I got one for a birthday or Christmas present, and then I opened it and took out all the pieces and looked at the instructions and I was like, wow that looks hard to put together. So it sat in pieces in that dust-laden box for some time, until my dad and my uncle helped me put it together. When it was complete, shining in its glory, launch day arrived. We went to a soccer field by an elementary school and my co-builders made me stand much farther back than I wanted. After the obligatory countdown, I pressed the button and that sucker launched. It was inspiring and patriotic, not unlike the 4th of July.

Somewhere around that time I saw Apollo 13, and I was like, man, being trapped in a failing spaceship is stressful.

But there were good times, too. Like Space Mutiny, a thrilling MST3K rendition about, you guessed it, mutiny in space. Yet as the gang is quick to note, most of the spaceship looks like parts of a giant warehouse/basement. In that same vein, there's Prince of Space, who flies around in a tiny spaceship, and cannot be harmed by weapons of any sort.

So all in all, spaceships aren't so bad, really. They can be fun, they can help you destroy asteroids hurtling toward earth, they can go into warp speed, they can basically help you travel through space. They can even travel through time to snatch up some humpback whales that you can take back to the future to solve earth's impending doom.

Originally I was going to discuss the ethics of funding a space program when there are millions without health insurance, but who's to say, really?

So Jim, that one's for you. Any other reader requests?

2 comments:

  1. YOUR LINK HAS OPENED UP MY EYES TO A CACHE OF ONLINE EPISODES OF MST3K. THIS SIGNIFIES THE END OF MY PRODUCTIVITY.

    Thank you and Good night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Though I appear all cool, like I've known about this cache for some time, I honestly just found it. Netflix has some, but they are mostly older, and while I like Joel, I'll forever be a Mike fan.

    ReplyDelete