Hiding Kirk

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I recently saw—don’t ask where—a U.S. Space Force officer dressed in camouflage.  How fitting for a Trump-era agency.  I should think a Space Force uniform should be all black, maybe with little white dots on it.  Rather like my black lawn furniture that got in the way when I was cleaning my paint sprayer full of white paint.  I often wonder about our love affair with feeling safe.  Perhaps my own phobias have reached such a level that they’ve cancelled each other out.  If I was trying to hide in space, I think I’d try to look small, and dress in black.  Camouflage, which is based on colors found down here, probably wouldn’t do so well for the other planets of our solar system.  Or even the moon, for that matter.  And I personally think I might trust the aliens not to have earth-like issues.  After all, we think it’s okay to let machines think for us.

I grew up quite the sci-fi fan.  I read lots of books in that genre and enjoyed science fiction movies almost as much as my beloved monsters.  I used to watch that show, UFO in the 1970s.  The one with the interceptors with a huge missile on their noses.  I wasn’t really worried about aliens trying to invade.  Perhaps these days I think it might be better than the tedium of daily existence in the 9-2-5 world.  In any case, if we must have a Space Force, ought they not dress for the job?  I’m pretty sure I’ve got some tin foil in the kitchen with which to construct my hat.  Let’s look the part—that’s all I’m saying.

Photo credit: NASA

While all this is going on speculation has been growing about water on Mars.  There’s a good chance we may find it.  (We can always hope that if Elon Musk makes it to the red planet that he will take Donald Trump with him.)  If we are looking for invaders, though, we probably have to go further afield.  That’s alright, dynamic duo, we’ll get along without you.  Perhaps in the interim someone will realize that, dressed in earth green camouflage, our Space Force will surely stand out against the surface of Mars, or wherever they might go.   Unless it’s a planet very much like earth.  That houses intelligent life.  Maybe the beings there feel safe, knowing that their space force—for surely they will have one—is dressed in black.  Or at least, their life really is intelligent.

Space Farce

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Okay, so “Space Force” sounds like a gimmick that you’d see in a 1950’s ad geared to dungaree-wearing boys.  These boys, who’d be named “Dick” would show the girls, named “Jane,” just how it was done.  So as I read about the furor of dedicating a King James Bible from the Bible Museum as the official Bible for military branches aimed at the stars, I had to think how very small we actually are.  So 45 thinks, like Reagan thought, that we need outer-space defenses.  These guys need to read more science fiction.  Actually, some plain old science would help.  If there are most advanced civilizations out there—and such seems increasingly likely, given that our understanding of science is subject to change—we are nothing more than cosmic mosquitoes buzzing close to our own planet where we can wail on each other in the name of lucre.  And we call it “Space Force.”

An article on NPR points out the hypocrisy of swearing in the military on a Bible.  One guy in there, I’ve heard tell, was called “the prince of peace.”  He’s somewhere near the back.  The public loves a good warmonger, though.  We can send our tentative rockets into orbit where bug-eyed aliens laugh with bemusement, and say “Just you try something.”  Or we can make business deals with Russia with one hand while pointing our missiles in their direction with the other.  Is that a missile or am I misreading something, Dick?  I can’t ask Jane, because she just follows along.  Maybe we’re inheriting the consequences of those who grew up reading Dick and Jane.  Boys with their rockets, girls with their dolls.

Bringing religion into the military is nothing new.  German soldiers marched out into a couple of World Wars with “Gott mit uns” inscribed on their waists.  Millions died.  No lessons were learned.  So now we want to take conflict so far over our heads that we can’t even see.  Ancient people knew the gods were fighting far above.  That’s how they made sense of the world.  Some, like Erich von Däniken took those stories literally and thought our alien observers were the reason.  Now that we’ve got drones we have no need of UFOs anymore.  All that sci-fi I watched as a kid wasn’t wasted after all.  Only I grew up reading that Bible instead of swearing on it.  I was pretty sure that war wasn’t a good thing, as he rode on a red horse with his sword pointing upward.  Time to dust off William S. Gray and get back to watching Space Force. 

From NASA’s photo library