Today, Planet Sulu, Tomorrow, Planet Claire
Forget getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. George Takei, known to Trekkies as Hikaru Sulu of the Starship Enterprise, has an asteroid named after him now. The rock was first spotted in 1994 by Japanese astronomers and as we all know was named 1994 GT9. It’s going to take a while to get used to calling it 7307 Takei, but after a while, it will seem perfectly natural, just like it did when we had to start calling two other asteroids 4659 Roddenberry and 68410 Nichols. Heck, I can’t even remember what those two used to be called.
The announcement comes on the 50th anniversary of the first human foray into the final frontier–Sputnik, of course. The Soviets weren’t even 100% aware of the significance of what they had done, but boy, the rest of the world sure was. It was before my time, but it launched the space race, which I grew up watching, along with Star Trek. I was of course certain that the former would ultimately lead to the latter.
Regettably, it hasn’t. John F. Kennedy’s challenge to get to the moon before the 60s were over–not because it was easy, but because it was hard–made for a thrilling decade that I could recognize even as a toddler. For one moment in the summer of 1969, the entire world watched as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon. Even the Soviets, formidable cold warrior foes, had to acknowledge that while it was Americans who had beaten them in the space race, it was also a testament to what men from Earth could accomplish.
Within a few years, it was over, and the conquest of colonization of space once again was pretty much confined to science fiction.
Enter the X-prizes. Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One proved that private enterprise might be the launch pad from which the Starship Enterprise might emerge. Virgin Galactic hopes to sells commercial passenger tickets on a Spaceship One inspired design that will go to the edge of space in a few years. Later this month, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Wirefly X-Prize Cup will bring privately-funded entrants vying to win a design for a Lunar Lander.
And Google is getting a hand in as well, with the Google Lunar Lander X Prize–$30 million in prizes if a privately funded effort can land a robotic lander on the surface of the moon. The object has to get to the moon, travel at least 500 meteres, and send pictures and video back to Earth by 2012.
As a kid, it seemed like we’d be vacationing on the moon by now, and space travel would be routine. I suppose that’s what you get when you wait for NASAÂ and taxpayers to figure this out. Let’s hope the private sector comes up with better results.
And as for Sulu’s asteroid, well, that’s nothing. I am going to get an actual star named Geekfoolery.com. No kidding… they say it’s all official and everything!
Permalink | Trackback | del.icio.us Digg Reddit
Leave a comment
