Starfleet Is For Pussies

Now don’t let the title of this blog entry fool you. I am a huge fan of Star Trek. I got sucked in when The Next Generation debuted and have watched every series and all the movies in the franchise (Deep Space Nine is still my favorite). But recently I have seen a slew of movies, Interstellar being the most recent, that show a much harsher version of space exploration that makes anything the crew of the Enterprise (whichever version you choose) look like a pleasure cruise.

First of all let me say, if you haven’t seen Interstellar, you really should go check it out. Maybe not in IMAX like I did because that left me kind of nauseous and partially deaf, but definitely go see it. It is an amazing film. But while watching this movie there is one thing you realize pretty obvious off the bat; space travel involves a lot of math. Every moment in this film the crew of the space ship have to calculate their velocity, their trajectory, their fuel consumption, the different rate of time around a black hole (that’s a big plot point), there are just endless calculations being done. I don’t know about anyone else, but I never saw Lieutenant Worf taking out a calculator in any episode of TNG.

Another couple of things differentiating Interstellar from Star Trek are creature comforts of any kind. The Enterprise had a gym, a lounge, a holodeck (on TNG at least) and replicators (also TNG). The only comforts we see the people in Interstellar enjoy are heart wrenching videos from their loved ones at home and recordings of ocean noises (not kidding, there is a scene where we see crewmembers listening to ocean sounds in I assume an attempt to remain calm in a hostile environment). The Interstellar crew don’t even have gravity most of the time. Throughout the entire run of The Next Generation you never saw someone in a spacesuit of any kind. Life Support would fail all the time on the Enterprise, but no one ever floated off his or her chair.

The simple explanation is that Star Trek is meant to be an idealized version of space travel. Some sort of grand dream for people to aspire to. And it certainly has affected us as such. Many NASA scientists claim an interest in space because of Star Trek. iPads and iPhones, flip phones, you can see a design influence if you watch the series and note the communicators and pads sported by the people of the 24^th century. Interstellar is more of a cautionary tale. Humanity has no more time on this planet and must desperately search for another place to live. We’re not exploring the stars because we’ve solved all our problems back at home (something you are reminded of constantly on Star Trek). In Interstellar you either go out into space or you die. And all of humanity will die.

Even the Star Trek series Enterprise, which was a prequel of sorts, was a rather comfy way to travel through space. Despite stripping away many of the creature comforts displayed in the other series, as this was supposed to show the earliest days of Warp space exploration, life on the Enterprise was still first class compared to the baggage of Interstellar. Seriously, the crew in Interstellar literally put themselves in giant suitcase like boxes making themselves baggage.

The main message seems to be that once mankind is able to crack faster than light space travel then space travel will become like any other form of travel. The careful mathematics needed to insure every ounce of weight has some sort of practical purpose will give way to onboard margaritas and tennis rackets for space travel. Once it no longer becomes a chore then people will do it for enjoyment and recreation. In the earliest days of flight, boarding an aircraft was considered an event. Something to be memorialized and dressed up for. Now it is a common occurrence. Same with cruise ships, though even more so. So too could someday space travel be. Booking travel to Mars could be like going to Disneyland.

"We've got a lot of work to do."

The simple truth is that the closer to our time science fiction is placed then the closer that fiction will try to emulate our world. Star Trek has hundreds of years between us and them so it can argue that by that time all of the difficult parts of space travel will be solved. Interstellar is only a few decades off (maybe a century, they never out and out say what year it takes place in). In the present, space travel is rough. Astronauts have to deal with cramped quarters and isolation. Spending a given amount of time in space leads to muscle and bone deterioration. Everything about space exploration is hard and rough. But it is conceivable that these initial expeditions could lead to Federation style space travel. Just as the voyages of Christopher Columbus one day gave way to voyages onboard The Queen Elizabeth II.