PRESSURE!!

Well, gee. Now that I know I'm part of the blogger cult, I expect that I have to start living up to my status as a member, lest Matej and the thought police start tracking me down to give me a firm scolding for my lack of updates.

As you might be aware, I'm new to this whole blogging and web page design thing, but being who I am, I insist on mucking with things until I get something that I like. Strangely enough, I find that the page looks different on different browsers (I guess that this has to do with all the codes I've been blindly messing around with). If the page looks screwy to you, drop me a line, and if you have some HTML advice, even better still! Hey, I don't even know if that mail link will work, but I'll see soon enough.

Something absolutely out-of-control idiotic has come to my attention recently. My sister wrote me to tell me that the Russians are planning to send a boy-band pretty boy into outer space. That's right, Lance Bass of N'Sync is going to the International Space Station. Really, it was just a matter of time, kiddies, wasn't it? I mean, he can howl into a microphone and pass it off as singing, he can flail his limbs around wildly and pass it off as dancing, and he can prostitute himself to Teen Beat magazine and MTV and pass it off as a career.....why not sit in a tin can filled with thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen fuel, look pretty while others push the buttons, and pass it off as being an astronaut?

Now, I have to admit that I like the idea of space tourism. What kind of self-respecting Star Wars fan wouldn't? When I said that I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, I was dead serious. I was completely focussed on the goal....my math scores were up, my science scores were through the roof, I read anything and everything about astronomy and space travel that I could get my hands on....as far as I was concerned, I was going and no one could stop me. That is, until I had to get glasses. To this day, NASA still screens their astronaut candidates based on vision. I was crushed and lost most of my interest in maths and sciences and instead became an art bum. I guess a part of me felt that I had wasted my time with it only to have my body fail me. Anyway, maybe today I would have played it differently, but I didn't at the time, and no point going back there again.

And then, two years ago, I heard that they were finally going to send a privately-funded citizen into space. I was overjoyed. If he could go, maybe someday it would be financially viable for ME to go. Way to go Tito for paving the way! And then I heard about the X-Prize competition and I was even more excited. There was an organiztion that was doing something to stimulate space tourism technology and there were companies out there that wanted to make a trip into orbit cheap!

And now, Lance Bass is going to be the "average man's" newest representative in space.

*cough*

Forgive me if I resent the fact that he's going and not me. He's not paying his way (his label is footing the 20 million to get him the ticket), he doesn't meet the requirements set by the international space community, he's not going to be fully trained by launch time, and in the event that something goes wrong on the flight, what's he going to do? Sing "Bye, Bye, Bye"?

This is a pretty clear statement that Russia doesn't care who they're putting into space, as long as they can pay the price tag for the ride, and the record label is paying the bill for the sake of publicity for the band. Now sure, putting him into space will raise the profile of space exploration with the younger, teenage generation. Maybe once again, it will inspire young people to think about space and recognize the benefits of space exploration to our society....but any benefit from that will only be realized several decades down the road. If the international space community wants to raise their profile now, send someone who will impress the people who actually have the money to finance space exploration ventures and make space tourism an affordable reality.

And someone send Russia some money for their space program. Star City is becoming a laughing-stock, and not one that I particularly enjoy.

And now, back to learning HTML! The appearance of this site may be changing around a little over the next few weeks, but it'll settle down, rest assured.