the life and times of endenizen » Space

For the longest time, you were the most distant planet in our solar system. Well, I guess sometimes you and Neptune sometimes switched places, but you’ll always be furthest from my heart. Oh… hmm, that sounded bad. What I mean is, you’ll always be a great ending to our solar system. Er, except that you aren’t a planet anymore. Don’t worry, I’m sure kids will still learn about you for years to come. Maybe you’ll even be *more* popular now that you’ve been demoted. You could make an incredible comeback like Y did after being kicked out of the vowels club. Y isn’t just one of those consonants… it’s a “sometimes vowel” and I think that means a lot more. Instead of being remembered as “and Pluto” you’ll now be “and sometimes Pluto” but that’s almost the same thing. I’ll make up a new cheer:

Ready… set…

MERCURY! VENUS! EARTH! MARS!

JUPITER! SATURN! URANUS! NEPTUNE!

and sometimes PLUTO! YAY!!

That’s got a nice ring to it. Saturn has some nice rings too. Maybe if you grew some rings like Saturn they’d let you back in. I can’t be sure, they might also bring up the truth that you’re tiny, your orbit is strange, and you’re waaaaay out there.

Some people poke fun at your new classification but I don’t have any problem with dwarves. I think sometimes they’re even more fun than… er, regular-sized things. Some have falsely called you a “meteor” but that would mean you’re entering our atmosphere and that wouldn’t be very nice. After all, you’re not going to ever become a planet again if you just destroy the earth. If you’ve got issues, just wait 220 years and then make fun of Neptune as it becomes the loser. I’ll even give you some help:

Now look who’s furthest from the sun!

Your rings suck!

Your moon is going the wrong way!

You’re blue!

All in all, I’m bummed that they took away your manhood… er, planethood. Bummed like when I ran out of interesting things to write in my blog. In other words, meh.

Side note: I’m not making this up. Pluto was demoted from full planet status to a mere dwarf planet. You can read about this, well everywhere, but here’s 8 places to get you started (and to reinforce the fact that there can be only 8 *real* planets): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. In terms of the Neptune insults, 1. Neptune is further out than Pluto for 20 years out of every 249 (which next occurs in September of 2226). 2. Neptune’s rings are faint, but may be growing! (especially after its moon, Titan, smashes into the side of it). 3. Neptune’s moon, Titan, is the only moon in the solar system which orbits its planet opposite the direction of the planet’s spin (which means you actually get younger if you live on it). 4. Neptune is, in fact, blue (it’s all the methane in the atmosphere). Now you know!

After many delays, inspections, waiting, and hoping, the shuttle finally launched on Tuesday. Since then, my love of space has been rekindled. I use to dream about being an astronaut. Even thinking about it gives me such a feeling of “everything down there is meaningless.” I suppose people, by nature, already have that impression about everyone who they percieve as “lower” than them, but that is another story.

I’ve been to Space Camp a couple times. I think I was 7 the first time I went. I remember watching videos of the trip afterwards and wondering who on earth could hold a camera so unsteadily. My second time I remember running all the way around the enormous dive tank astronauts use to simulate weightlessness and train for missions. It always amazed me that, as we were not content to be confined to our planet, we developed a way to explore areas outside of it. Since I also have an interest in radio transmissions, i suppose you could add “monitoring extraplanetary radio frequencies” to my list of dream jobs. Alright, maybe not so much “dream jobs” as, “that’d be fun to do for a little bit.”

Some amazing things are happening in terms of Mars exploration. The Mars Express team has produced some very-high-res imagery of Mars, including a pretty cool one of some ice. The Mars Homestead Project is developing plans for the first settlement on mars. They expect to be ready in as few as 20 years to house 12 people in a permanent facility. There’s a good article summarizing their work over on Wired.

Anyone else into stuff like this?