Science

Fifty years ago today, in response to the Sputnik crisis, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA.

For a kid like me, growing up in Florida in the final days of the Cold War, NASA stood as a mixed symbol. On one hand, what a heritage! Stern men in white lab coats, beeping displays, cold readiness, and firey, brain-rattling launches: NASA was a secular monastery devoted wholly to the god Science. Its doings were at once utterly trustworthy, and tinged with deep unease.

And on the other hand–what a tidal shift. In the decade between 1985 and 1995, the bipolar political alignment of the planet, in place for forty years, unraveled. We lost a shuttle and launched a telescope. The first pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, in all their blurry wonder, were beamed back to a world fresh out from under the heavy blanket of history. The universe expanded in scope and magnificence, while the planet itself seemed so much smaller and more available than it had ever been.

Is it any wonder our concept of “enemy” weakened? Indeed, we went from threatening Russians with “Star Wars” strategic missile defense, to docking at their space station, Mir.

Children my age, born in the seventies, were never around for the run-up of the Cold War that resulted in NASA’s existence. We were never around for the fear, and never understood it. We knew only Brezhnev, only Gorbachev–a disintegrating threat. Science was an institutional authority to be questioned: Why the militarization? Why did anyone ever think Mutually Assured Destruction was a good idea? We’d missed the opening moves of the Cold War, and so felt compelled to hasten the endgame.

We would use science to clean up the messes that had been made with it. We would join with out former enemies, and save the environment of the only habitable planet science had ever found. And maybe that’s a good thing: as the decades roll on, and government money gets tighter, it’s harder and harder to imagine that space colonization is close.

But part of me is sad, especially to think that Shuttle launches may end in two years. We may become better stewards of this planet, but will we ever be able to leave it? Was the end of the “Us and Them” political attitude also the end of our deep motivation to master space?

My one consolation is the knowledge that those secular monasteries are still there, in Florida, in Texas, in California. They’re still filled with beeping dials, and lab-coated men and women who want to reach the stars far more than most of us will ever know.

Thank you, NASA.

Here’s an interesting Yahoo article that confirms something I’ve long suspected: that people my age can expect to live a lot longer than the current 80-year average. A Stanford University biologist gives information about anti-aging treatments that may come on the market within the next decade or two that will likely increase the average age of death to 100 years. Personally, I believe that by the time I die, it will be more like 120.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. First, along with running low on oil, this is going to cause major, unavoidable, permanent changes to our society–to our whole civilization. Will we still retire at 65? That would leave forty whole years to pursue hobbies. That’s almost like another whole lifetime. And if the retirement age gets pushed back, due to people being fit to work for longer, I think we will see a shift in the kinds of work people do. Plugging away at a career your heart isn’t into for 20-30 years is one thing; but 40-50 years? Half a century to delay your dreams until retirement? I don’t see people putting up with that.

People already change jobs, even careers, a lot more than they did when the Boomers were children (a period everyone seems to collectively agree is the “real America”). Living an extra 20-30 years will probably have the greatest effect on the work lives of Generation X and the generation after us, because we are old enough to have ingested the “work til you’re 65, then retire” meme, but young enough to where the therapies will be available while we’re still working. What will we do? With our solid grasp of technology, will there be an even bigger push towards workplace flexibility? Will we look at our longer lives, and choose to be more fluid in our priorities? Will things like gap years and extended parental leave become the norm? Or will we still rush to get to college, rush to graduate by 23, rush into a career, and just be good little cogs for even longer?

Another interesting aspect of this is how it may affect women. We already live longer than men, but in our society, we become more invisible as we age, especially past menopause. It’s true that Boomer women are changing how older women are seen, just like they’ve broadened the experience of everything they’ve already gone through. But massive problems have nevertheless been left in their wake. Young women are still seen by society as “past their peak” appearance-wise at 25, and automatically less wothwhile; and 30 is practically “old”. Will what is considered the most attractive age finally rise to more realistic numbers? And menopause–will it come later, vastly increasing the fertile years and the childbearing-age popluation? Or will it stay around 50, which will then become only the halfway point of a woman’s life, leaving five whole decades free for other things?

One hundred years is a long time to put up with being judged, dismissed, and legislated against. Will women face down a 100-year battle with sexism and finally demand to be treated as equal human beings for their whole lives? Or will they still be perceived to peak at twenty, and just have an 80-year decline, instead of a 60-year one?

We will inevitably see.