June 3, 2015 - Dreaming of Tomorrow: featuring musings about Interstellar and Tomorrowland

*It is recommended that you watch both movies before reading this entry. SPOILERS GALORE!

I've been meaning to get this down for quite sometime.

Back in November 2014, I went to watch Interstellar about five times in the theater I was completely blown away by it. Prior to seeing it in the theater I was fascinated with it and when I discovered the 2008 version of its script online, I was even more excited when it finally came out. Christopher Nolan's film has flaws, my brother did not care for the use of the fifth dimension. I'll admit it is a tough concept for some to grasp. In the original script, the use of a gravity box was the craziest concept utilized. My brother agreed that it would've been a better plot device, when I told him about it.

In both versions of the film, we see a society that has turned its noses down from space to plow the soil below in the hopes of growing enough food (corn) for the starving people as a blight ravages whats left of the available crops. Society has no desire for exploration of deep space as evidenced by the main character's daughter's teacher Ms. Hanley/Kelly whom states, "We don’t want a repeat of the wastefulness and excess of the 20th century represented. Your children would be off learning about this planet. Not tales of leaving it." The main character Cooper later tells his father-in-law that,"It's like we've forgotten who we are. Explorers! Pioneers! Not caretakers." This shows us that in this bleak dystopic future of Cooper and company that some wish a return to explore the stars.

My brother, his girlfriend and I went to watch Tomorrowland at the theater, this May. Overall, I was up for a rip-roaring adventure, but instead we got a chase film with a sense of adventurous forboding. Now, this did not constitute a "bad film" only one that hadn't reached the potential that it needed to. In the film, we follow Casey Newton who wants to follow through on finding the Tomorrowland location she saw in a visual representation when she touched a "T" stamped pin. We later, see George Clooney's character Frank Walker, who represents the older generation who used to have audacious  dreams. With this dichotomy, we have the two generations, Frank's who has become more of a pessimist and Casey's who despite seeing all the chaos and destruction ahead for her generation she wonders "what are [they] doing to fix it."

Both films harken back to the Space Age, when Kennedy said in 1961 that humanity would be on the Moon by the end of the decade. An idea that was daunting but the country had the confidence to believe it and achieve it. And as luck would have it, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to walk on the moon in 1969, at the end of the decade as Kennedy had mandated. Today, such an audacious project would probably get eye-rolls from politicians on both sides of the aisle, claiming such an endeavor was economically irresponsible and wasteful. In 2012, republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said when campaigning in Florida, that he wanted to put a colony on the Moon by 2020 and make it the 51st state. As insane as making a moon colony the next U.S. state is, the mandate of a colony by 2020 was achievable.

Companies like Bigelow Aerospace, Space Adventures and SpaceX are some of the many private space firms with goals of establishing a tourist economy in Low-Earth orbit in order to fund outposts and eventually colonies on the Moon and Mars. Even filmmaker James Cameron and other entrepreneurs are discussing ways to mine the Asteroid Belt, bringing much needed revenue to fund interplanetary infrastructure. However, NASA's annual budget is roughly $18 billion, approximately 0.5% of the total budget of $3 trillion. NASA's budget peaked in 1966 at 4.41% of the total budget of the U.S. since then the budget has declined immensely. Despite this, from 2000 to 2008, the defense budget ballooned from $301.6 billion to $621.1 billion. The agency plans to put a crew on Mars by the mid-late 2030s but many do not feel that it is a realistic timeframe.

Back in 2010, President Obama restructured the U.S. mission in space, de-emphasizing the need for returning to Moon and instead pushing toward Mars, with an asteroid mission being the first step. The new goals placed us on the asteroid in 2021, on the Moon by 2025 and Mars by 2035. NASA is working to complete a launch vehicle and capsule for launch in 2018. But, with the current budget, intervals of 2-5 years per launch would have to be instituted and that would be grating on the public. Congress' has kept NASA's budget so small, many of these goals are just ideas that could be accomplished instead of will be.

Senator Ted Cruz was recently selected as the chairman of the subcommittee on Space and Science. He wants to redirect the focus of NASA away from earth sciences and atmospheric research toward space exploration. With the current budget, we are looking to send a crew to an asteroid by 2028, a lunar sortie by 2033, with a lunar outpost by 2036, hitting the Martian Moons by 2043 and finally landing on Mars by 2050!!! But even this, is with a budget increase of 2.5% or 5% per year. There would need to be a massive "call-to-arms" to regain interest in space travel and science in order to keep moving forward in space at a faster rate but as it stands now, public disinterest will be a major obstacle.

I will come back to this concept again, but it is intriguing to think about. I dream of one day standing on the surface of a new world as one of the first batch of colonists. I'd really like it to be a reality someday, I'll choose to be the optimist that I am and never say never.

*all U.S. government budget information taken from Office of Management and Budget.
*io9 article: Obama Dreams of Space, But Where's the Money?