Geeks in Space
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Geeks in Space
Why tech nerds are especially drawn to rocket travel.
By Julia Ioffe
Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - 3:39pm
For the people who weren't sufficiently athletic or eagle-eyed to become astronauts in the first place, completing this training is no easy feat. Nor is space a cakewalk. Once in orbit, blood becomes more concentrated and pools in your head; muscles atrophy and bones lose calcium. Back on earth, cosmonauts have to be lifted out of the landing capsule, essentially paralyzed for days.
"It's no joy ride," says Dyson, who is still waiting for the price to come down before she uses her successfully completed training in space. "It smells. It's noisy. It's the same people every day. The food gets repetitive. It's lonely."
But for the tech geeks, it is part of the fun.
"Now that I have been to space, and I have survived the second market crash, I hope to restart Britannia Manor Mark 3!" Garriott wrote in a recent e-mail. "Plus, of course, I plan to get back to space ASAP!"
Photo of Sergey Brin by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images for Space Adventures.
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Photo of Sergey Brin by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images for Space Adventures
Comments
Apollo Orphans
Somehow I missed Apollo Orphans. I'll definitely have to watch it.
I choked up over this paragraph-
"There's a documentary called Orphans of Apollo that's stated this well," he explained. "There's a generation of us, who are the tech leaders of today, who were universally inspired to go into science and technology because of the NASA Lunar Space Program. And the reason the movie is called Orphans of Apollo is because, in many ways, we feel orphaned by the fact that the space industry has not done a good job of capitalizing on that momentum of what many of us believed were the first steps into space, carrying the mission of human space flight farther and farther into deep space."
I do so feel orphaned. In grade school, we all trooped down to the kid's house where they had a huge color TV to watch the moon landings, drink Tang and eat Space Food sticks. We literally drank the kool-aid, and figuratively we all wanted to be "right there".
I worked on satellites. I wanted to be an astronaut, but for the NASA depicted in Apollo 13, not the NASA of the early 90's that I encountered, dominated by defense contractors looking to extend their companies tentacles further into the agency's systems. I've mourned the fact that we likely won't get to Mars in my lifetime, and I'm only 45. For every techie that made it big and can afford the trip - there are thousands of us that look at the stars longingly and mournfully.