To Boldly Go Where No Wives or Kids Can Follow
The final frontier isn't just for misfits and loners.
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GoogleThis eerie youth-sized spacesuit, on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia, is actually a non-functional replica of what the big-boy Mercury astronauts wore. It was whipped up as part of an early 1960s publicity campaign by the tire maker BF Goodrich. Despite the popularity at the time of the TV series Lost in Space (reportedly John Kennedy Jr.’s favorite show as a tyke), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) never seriously considered launching a family into orbit. Space might have been the New Frontier, but in the early days of manned flight, there never seemed to be quite enough room for the wife and kids.
The mid-century model of space exploration thus updated the misconception that the old American frontier was tamed by misfit loners such as Natty Bumppo in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales rather than nuclear families like the one led by Pa Ingalls in the Little House series. No wonder, then, that enthusiasm for interplanetary travel and colonization faded even as we reached the moon. As Elton John’s Rocket Man might say, “it’s lonely out in space.”
And no wonder that space is finally regaining its glamour as a new breed of visionaries start to sell it as fun for the whole family.
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Despite the popularity at the time of the TV series Lost in Space (reportedly John Kennedy Jr.’s favorite show as a tyke), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) never seriously considered launching a family into orbit. Space might have been the New Frontier, but in the early days of manned flight, there never seemed to be quite enough room for the wife and kids.
Space Hippies, of course! What if they ran into Space Hippies?
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But are they smoking space weed? Because we need to think of the children.
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Do you smoke grass out in space Bowie? Or do they smoke astroturf? OooOooo
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Do you use your pointy nipples as telescopic antennae, transmitting data back to Earth?
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What if they ran into Space Hippies?
Just let the Space Hippies go to Eden and eat the poison fruit. Problem solved.
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They would go space truckin'.
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+1
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I didn't know Jerry Garcia was in Deep Purple.
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Why the fuck was this thing even posted ?
It looks like a 5 cent Blog reject submission !
Nick Gillepsie found something weird in his black jack journey, big DEAL.
Fuck OFF Reason, please write something relevant next time.
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Hey now, maybe you should just relax?
I agree with your point though. I read this and was wondering why he forgot the link at the bottom to read the rest of the article. -
Nick must have heard it was JFKjr's death anniversary, and needed to follow through with TMZing his story?
I don't get it either
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Here's an idea, start your own website and post whatever the fuck you like there. Don't like it, don't read it.
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What? No alt-text? WTF?
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We can send a man to the moon, but we can't add witty text to photos?
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Professor Robinson: We need to gather more information about this new planet. Don, you take my 16-year-old, blonde daughter out into the chariot for the rest of the day. Penny, you stay with me. And Will, you and the robot go out into the uncharted wilderness and take this mincing, boy-hungry pedophile with you.
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Thats exactly every story!!!
Back in those days, I guess the old pedophile with the young boy was considered Socratatic or something...something. -
Fear not. One of Irwin Allen's Three Laws had the robot acting as a cock block.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!
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Oh, the pain!
Come heah, deah boy!
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IIRC young will got to do shit like fly the ship unsupervised, shoot monsters with laser guns and drop explosives in volcanoes.
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Headline from 2034:
Italian Space Cruiser Grazes Sun in Pointless Stunt. Thousands Dead.
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Captain abandoned ship before passengers were incinerated.
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Italian Capitain on radio to Coast Guard:
"No problem, I droppa the passengers all off on Ceti Alpha Five before collision..." -
You Jamolke this is Ceti Alpha Five
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Captain: We were having a navigational issue.
Cost Guard: Then why were you going full speed ahead if you were having issues?
Captain: The space was deep enough, the Sun was uncharted, I didn't know it was there.
Cost Guard: The Sun? You didn't know the Sun was there? People have been living around the Sun for millions of years, it was charted before we even had charts.
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but we hit it at night...
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lol
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And I didn't abandon ship, I stumbled inside the escape pod and pressed the eject button by mistake ... you must believe me.
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Which was the plot of several Lost in Space Episodes.
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Fortunately my bimbo just happened to fall in the escape pod with me, and by happenstance she had a tumbler full of martini and appropriate glassware.
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It was my understanding that the sun emits something called light.
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Only during the day, at night it emits dark.
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That explains so much.
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View this article.
I click through and get only one more paragraph. A paragraph even shorter than the first. WTF?
I think Nick must have woken up without the Jacket this morning. The only explanation I can think of.
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The Jacket hates you.
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Actually, Nick's still in bed. The Jacket wrote this, and it don't type so good.
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We ate your Jacket.
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Did it taste like baby?
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Dingos do not eat BABIES!
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Space is finally regaining its glamour as a new breed of visionaries start to sell it as fun for the
whole familyextremely wealthy. -
Can we send Mitt? And Newt?
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Sure. Why not. But who is this "we" you speak of?
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We need Dr Smith-meets-Space Hippies fanfic.
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No link to Robby the Robot?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-YFH50DZ6EI always imagined myself on that spacecraft, and all the males (except me!) were actaully lost somewhere. I was too young to have understood exactly what I would do with the females, but I figured I would have plenty of time to figure it out...
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in the early days of manned flight, there never seemed to be quite enough room for the wife and kids.
Kind of a Brokeback Rocket type of deal, then?
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Will & Space
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There must be a lot of masturbating in that there space station. I wonder if there has been any equipment failure due to equipment getting gummed up by loose loads.
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Well, you know they use a vacuum hose to suck the water off their bodies after showering, right? Ya gotta expect that suction hose has other uses as well...
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You would rub that thing all over your body knowing what the other guys have been doing with it?
Ew.
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I would request my own, personal hose.
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Hope you've got some cash stashed away. It cost something in the neighborhood of ten grand to lift a pound into space.
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Well as a government employee, I would demand it to be federally funded for my health, safety and hygienic needs. And I want mine to be gold-plated. And heated.
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...with attachments
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I think everyone gets their own nozzle. Same for the vacuum toilet.
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You don't know what it was like, out there all alone when the sex ray hit.
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Have you seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion?
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What he's complaining about is having a basic pleasure model Nexus replicant at hand.
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Space sex among humans. Has it happened? Discuss amongst yourselves.
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To keep this simple, let's make that between instead of among.
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If you interpret "among" the same way as it is interpreted in the Commerce Clause, masturbation would count. Right?
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To keep this even simpler, let's go with male-female sexual intercourse.
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Get a load of Space Rick Santorum over here.
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I see what you did there. Load. Santorum.
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I actually went back and edited my comment to put the word "Rick" in to avoid what you did there. (It didn't work.)
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You've been here long enough to know better than that.
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In space, no can hear you scream...
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...or cum
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I think it woudl be difficult to accomplish without special equipment. Most (all?) sexual positions rely on gravity to keep the participants close together.
I'd be willing to give it a try, though. -
Yes, but remember there would be an equal and opposite reaction, sending you across the room.
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F = MV
Either that's one heavy load or it's traveling fast enough to put a hole in the wall if it produces enough force to send you across the room.
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What, you've never had that?
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Which? Losing half my mass from a load or punching a hole in the wall with semen?
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Right.
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f=ma, retard. E=1/2mv^2. You're retarded.
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Whoops. Been many years since I took those classes.
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F=d(mv)/dt actually, or the time rate of change of momentum in English. You're both morons.
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dv/dt=a, retard, and so f=ma=m*dv/dt=d(mv)/dt. I can't believe what a retard you are.
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I see you have been furiously googling.
Or is it googling furiously?
Whatever it is, keep it furious.
Yo! -
Some of us can actually remember how to do calculus, thank you very much.
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Only if the mass is constant, which is usually a valid assumption, but not always. Rockets, how do they work again?
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I'll assume whatever I like to assume.
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Spherical turkeys.
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Assume a can opener!
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By sticking a couple of wires into a really hot cup of tea.
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Not if you employ Heisenbate compensators.
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Their motto:
"Easy come, easy go" -
So would abstaining.
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Good point.
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That's what I keep saying!
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I recall hearing something along these lines on NPR. They were talking to one of the astronauts, I think, or someone from NASA, and they said they do get asked this question, in light of the fact that women have gone on several space shuttle missions. The NASA person explained that the astronauts were kept very busy and pretty much every minute of their day was scheduled, so they wouldn't really have time for sex, and that the quarters were pretty close in any event, and there wasn't much of an opportunity for privacy.
Now, the Russian dudes on the international space station, up there alone for a year and a half? Hey, ya never know. Just remember - in space, noone can hear you grunt through clenched teeth.
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Oh come on, no time in the schedule? Who wouldn't skip sleep for space sex?
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Space sex among humans. Has it happened? Discuss amongst yourselves.
That question was asked by Mary Roach in one of her books. The sad answer is: No. Even that Zero-G sex scene that claimed to be from the vomit comit was faked.
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Does anyone else get the feeling that there are aliens out there looking down on the Earth in horror? Thankfully, their Prime Directive keeps them from firebombing the whole planet and they've just agreed to make sure humans don't get to far into space.
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Wouldn't surprise me to learn that we're intentionally being blacked out from galactic communications, due to our primitiveness. Once we go AI, we'll be okay.
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All advanced alien beings are, in fact, artificial beings that destroyed their creators. They are just waiting for "us" to join them.
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You guys have watched way too much Battlestar Galactica.
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There are a few other stories along those lines.
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We'll just have to threaten to block a space lane.
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Didn't the you learn anything from the wise teachings of Douglas Adams? They'll just demolish the Earth to make way for a space bypass.
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Vogon Captian: There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and its far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
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Reminds of of this classic short story.
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Prime Directive my ass, the "Space Endangered Species Act" protects Snail Darters and lungfish.
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Eventually they'll have to nuke the planet from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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I suspect that when families are going into space, that'll be when we know that space travel is a serious industry.
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"Are we there yet?" X ten trillion miles.
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Which will drive a physicist/father to discover a workaround to the light-speed limit.
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"Pedro's South of the Border - Only 475,896,745,098,238 miles!"
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Hahaha nicely done.
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First exit after the Oort Cloud. Can't miss it!
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I'm forming a company that blasts wives and kids into space and leaves men behind. I'm gonna be a trillionaire, bitches.
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I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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You're also going to be increasing the percentage of men in the population.
Trying to increase your chances of finding a mate?
NTTAWWT -
Mates will be awarded to the winners of ritual deathmatches, obviously. I can't believe I had to spell that out for you.
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Or to those willing to pay for access to my company service of flying you out to the wives.
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held every seven years?
For some that will mean much less sex, for others much much more.
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"I'm beginning to think there will be no forced mating at all."
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In theory, a politician traveling faster than light could outrun all his scandals.
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Well, he would just be a thin layer of paste until reconstructed by his cruciform.
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THOU SHALT NOT VIOLATE CAUSALITY IN MY LIGHT CONE, FUCKERS.
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In coming years the most advanced space program is going to be from Beijing since we've sacraficed space exploration on the altar of tax cuts.
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Meaning that China can waste billions of dollars on a non-profitable enterprise. But then again, where would we be without the memory foam mattress and Tang?
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Hey, my life would be incomplete if not for the pen that writes upside-down.
Of course, while NASA spent tens of thousands of dollars developing a pen that could write in zero-G, the Soviets used a pencil.
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Oh, and a couple of things that came out of the space program that actually have contributed to the betterment of society - Velcro(tm) and lightweight, battery-powered, high-torque, compact motors, which have made your DeWalt cordless drill and impact driver possible. As well as the rechargeable battery technology that powers it.
Amazing what you can get if you dump multiple billions of dollars, a few million man-years and several people's very lives into it, eh?
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Next thing you know, space exploration will be scarified into the altar of tax cuts as well.
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Only if Congress insists on regulating private space travel while refusing to fund NASA...
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The CITY-space EMPAIRE HAZ greater potential, gambolers then have four seven but POLI-space LINK.
So, now liberTARian spaceAPES are free movement of NON_space mammalz. Thus, professor JRQIENGLLS writes (1916) "When sinusoidal waveforms add, they may reinforce each other (constructive interference) or cancel each other (destructive interference) depending upon their relative phase. This phenomenon is used in the interferometer. A simple example is an experiment due to Young where light is passed through two slits."
Does division by negative numbers produce rational integers?
JUPITER: NO!
LEMON: NO! -
I lol'ed.
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Love it!
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Haha.. it was not easy trying to match that level of wild-eyed, mostly incoherent urgency. I pity the dark world in which it must live.
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Can't tell if serious or parody....
squinty eyes
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A+
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You forgot to correctly cite your source at the bottom of your copy and paste quotation.
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Well if we are going to do interstellar travel, we will need multigenerational ships
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I thought the title was referring to the philosophy of libertarianism, seing as Reason readers and writers are men with no wives and/or no kids (Nick Gillespie? Brian Doherty? Matt Welch? Ronald Bailey? etc.).