A New Dawn for Humanity (random thoughts on Artemis 2 launch)

 

When I was a kid, I stayed glued to the tv screen as long as possible before having to leave for school. I didn't ever want to miss a launch. If NASA had to delay, and I had to leave, I took my transistor radio and listened on the way. Sometimes I surreptitiously listened with a small wired earbud while Sister Mary Delores droned on about whatever lesson I wasn't at all interested in.

I was, I suppose, like almost every American kid. I was proud. I thought of being an astronaut. 

I don’t think I had the scientific aptitude that it would have taken, but somewhere in my elementary school age mind, I knew it was important. 

I watched all of those early NASA missions. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Whether they wanted to be or not, those first astronauts were heroes, made that way by the American press and ticker tape parades. 

We got to the Moon. Walked on it. And then stopped. Haven’t been back there since 1972.


Since then, Earth’s scientists have built a space station and flew several missions with a shuttle which was basically a flying semi. Two of those shuttles exploded killing all on board. 

Since those last steps on the Moon, we humans have more than doubled our population. The world is warmer and the only thing that might save our species is either leaving the earth or just wait until Artificial Intelligence wipes us out. 

It always pissed me off that we stopped going, stopped exploring, stopped the promise of Star Trek and Twilight Zone. Even though I was no scientist, I applied for the ill fated Teacher in Space program. 

So today, when I watched Artemis 2 successfully launch, I was glad and hopeful. 

 

 Some people will decry the expense of these and other such advances into space. They will, rightfully, point out the income inequality in the world, the housing problems, the hunger in many countries. 

Many of these same people continue to ignore that humanity has fucked itself into too many people, too many mouths to feed. Many of these same people live in houses with far more rooms than needed, with a house for their cars and a vacation home in the country. 

I suspect that many of them have said during the pandemic that we should be paying attention to the experts and trust the science behind vaccines. I say trust the science that will take humanity to the stars. 


I may never be that astronaut, but I hope we humans will survive to have many of them. 

A Parcel's Travels - Humans Do It Better

Every family has legendary stories that get told over over and over and passed down through generations. One of the stories in my family involves the United States Postal Service, which has existed since Ben Franklin was the first Postmaster. 


Over the 250 year history of the country, letters and packages have made it to their destinations through the hard work and dedication of the men and women of the system. That service and dedication has been told in print and film countless times, from tales of the Pony Express to Kevin Kostner’s The Postman. 

My first wife and I lived in Racine, Wisconsin for over 40 years. We moved four times - from apartments to a house to a condo and had always received our mail on time. We had been our second apartment for a couple of years when my wife’s grandmother sent us a card from where she lived in Mishicot, up North about 120 miles from us. We got the card two days later, but had to laugh and marvel.  

Grandma Josie’s handwriting wasn’t the best. She was, after all, 85 years old. What got us wondering, though, was how the postal service was able to deliver an envelope that simply was addressed:



Tim and Cathie

Racine

I wish I had saved that envelope, but I’M NOT MAKING THAT UP!

Racine was populated with about 85000 people, the second largest city in the state at the time. Maybe if the card’s route was reversed and we addressed it “Grandma Josie, Mishicot,” it would have made sense. I mean how many Grandma Josie’s could be in a town of 750 folks? 

The men and women of the postal system had a job and they did it. Today, however, a lot of their work is done by machines and that’s where the trouble starts. 

A friend sent me a poster that I had been looking for. It was in a sturdy tube and eventually got to me via a rather circuitous route. For the fourteen bucks my friend spent, it was supposed to have taken only one day to travel from New York to me in Illinois. Instead it took almost a month. 

I finally called the postal service’s help center and found out that it was in a warehouse where is went after Memphis. Why it went to Memphis after Indiana, I have no idea. The woman I spoke with did her due diligence and found the package but said, “I have to be honest. I don’t think you’re going to receive it. There’s a spelling discrepancy in the address.”



Evidently the scanners of the Postal Service  that are supposed to make things go faster and more smoothly can’t do what humans can do. The machines can’t tell that BVLD should have been BLVD. 


I’m glad that somebody at the undisclosed warehouse location figured that out and made a handwritten label. I don’t think it was the person who got Grandma Josie’s card to the right address, but that’s the kind of human work that machines and artificial intelligence will never be able to.