A question that pops up from time to time on sites like Quora goes like this. Humans went to the moon and back in the late 1960's and repeatedly into the 1970's, so why did we not go to Mars? Or back to the Moon? The simplest answer is usually the best and it runs - because the money dried up! NASA had a decent chunk of the American GDP through the Apollo program and once the Soviets had been bested, the funding was seriously pared back. No more lunar missions and certainly, no Martian adventures, for the meantime.

There were other reasons too. The technology that took men to the Moon was simply not up to a Martian trip. Take your mobile phone out of your pocket and look at it. Congratulations, your processing power is vastly superior to that available aboard these missions. The Moon is a three day journey each way. Mars, at best, will be a 21 month round trip! That is a massive difference in scale and difficulty and much else besides.

So now we are in a new space race, one in which Mars is a strong candidate for human exploration. There is a lot of anticipation and hype. Sure, technology has come a long way since those early days. There is talk of a manned mission before 2030, a mere 11 years away. A lot of work is being done but there are huge problems to overcome. The main one is simply this - how do humans survive in space over long periods of time? Zero gravity and radiation alone present serious long-term obstacles. The cocoon of the Earth protects and sustains us. Space really just wants to kill us.

A remote exploration of the Red planet still seems to be the best bet for now. Maybe we need a few more decades of innovation before we dare send people on such a dangerous mission. Robots can build living environments and perhaps even begin terraforming the surface, if that is possible. There is no point in sending folks to their certain deaths just for the sake of planting a flag. Or leaving a footprint.

"No, no, no - back to earth!"

Finally, Uluru is closed for climbing. No more the frantic race to beat the last chance, yesterday. I hear that the ascent was on many folk's "bucket-lists" ( I have a bone to pick with such lists!) and I also read today that people knew it was disrespectful to climb the monolith but cheerfully did so anyway. Ah, such jocular self-condemnation!

I suspect that if a group of people regularly attempted to climb St Peter's dome, or abseil Westminster Cathedral, there would be a big media to-do and lines of police ready to make arrests. That is the one important difference. Respect is an aspect of power and the dominant cultural group usually holds most of it.

But something positive has come about, even if it is decades late in arriving.

the bee drinks-
never mind the Spring gale,
the churning pool

Yesterday Ann added to her list of recent achievements by gaining her NSW Driver's License. In doing so, she leapfrogged the whole provisional license stage, largely because she already held a Thai license. I can also report with considerable pride that she passed both written and practical tests with a 100% correct record, something of a rarity I am told.

She is a very goal-centred person and works very determinedly on tasks until they are achieved. This is one of the key differences between people raised in Asian cultures (specifically, East and South East Asian) and the increasingly sorry state of how Westerners approach education and much else besides. I won't go on.

Well done honey.

I have started to settle in to the presenter's role at 2RPH, having now produced programs for The Australian, The Newcastle Herald and Features Forum. Each program has slightly different criteria and the computer needs to be individualised for each program. My role is to establish the running order on the monitor before the program goes to air. After that we are live and anything can happen, though I am required to mitigate any glitches or disasters. That's the theory.

Even though I have spent many hours on microphones and spoken in front of audiences, I still get very nervous in those opening minutes. This is the time when a lot of things happen in a particular sequence (such as program intros and time calls) and it falls to the announcer to get it right. I enjoy the thrill of it and generally I have been getting most things right. Now, I just need to sound a little less flustered on mike in those first five minutes!

My view.

The View

The view is fine from fifty,
Experienced climbers say;
So, overweight and shifty,
I turn to face the way
That led me to this day.

Instead of fields and snowcaps
And flowered lanes that twist,
The track breaks at my toe-caps
And drops away in mist.
The view does not exist.

Where has it gone, the lifetime?
Search me. What’s left is drear.
Unchilded and unwifed, I’m
Able to view that clear:
So final. And so near.

Philip Larkin

It may be that Mr Larkin was experiencing a mid-life crisis. It may be that his choices in life ("Unchilded and unwifed") left him with regrets about falling short or being unfulfilled in some way. But I think really that, given what he has written elsewhere (see Dockery and Son) Larkin just wanted a good jumping-off point for a poem. Anniversaries are often worthy places to be more reflective and the higher the number, the greater the introspection. I don't think that this is law of any sort. Ninety-year olds may have reached a place of wisdom where regrets dissipate, like the years. Middle age reflection is more prone to sadness - "Where has it gone, the lifetime?"

I find myself somewhere in between these positions, not really having regrets, but seeing the time ahead as growing shorter. At 61 the view really does exist, but it is not a landscape full of flowers. Rather, one of mildly sunny uplands, diminishing in brightness, perhaps a little greyer than greener, hoving into view, though slightly out-of-focus. That will do really.

the moon lounges
in the crook of a grey gum,
momentary lodger

The debate over immigration to Australia has grown increasingly acrimonious over the past two decades. Ever since the Tampa Incident, which I viewed from Japan with disgust, the broader focus has shifted to so-called boat people. These are the poor folk who venture forth in run-down and often dangerous boats with the intention of seeking a better life in Australia. They represent a very small proportion of people who seek asylum in Australia, yet they exercise mountains of newsprint and worse, are grist to every conservative politicians mill.

A recent article from The Guardian (8/10/19) highlighted this fact. Over the past five years, 95,000 people who came by plane requested asylum. Last year, over 24,000 sought refuge, though something like 84% were refused. Many are probably deemed to be economic refugees, which is just another way of saying people who want to work and get ahead and see Australia as a good place to do it. Many may be exploited while they wait assessment and legal challenges to rulings.

All countries want to have control of their borders but the manner in which this has been politicised and subsequently mishandled is appalling. Too many feeble-minded politicians and others with no moral fibre to speak of, together with their lackeys in the media, will beat any drum that furthers their ambitions. I am guessing that refugees with air-tickets will be the next big scare, with a conga-line of indignant toads lining up to say something tough, or just plain nasty.

The Enlightenment Project seems to have sputtered to a halt. It took a beating in the 20th Century with the advent of fascism, communism and the atom bomb. Post-Modernism dissected and dismissed it. Trumps ascendancy mocks it. Populists everywhere are reading the last rites. Yet still I hope.

Not fit to purpose.

Those of you who read this blog (surely no-one!-ed.) will know that my wife and I have been in a visa process for over two and a half years now. Ann's initial PR application was submitted in February of 2017, a temporary visa was granted in March 2018, her daughter's (dependants) visa shortly followed that and yesterday, both were granted permanent residency in Australia.

This is a cause for much rejoicing. The process is long and difficult and expensive, though more onerous yet is the sheer difficulty of proving genuine love and commitment to sceptical strangers. It is the job of immigration officers to test the bona fides of applicants and that is perfectly fair. It is not unreasonable for them to demand a high standard of evidence. What is hard is the finding of that evidence where there is only flesh and blood, words and actions, beseeching thoughts that cannot be translated onto a neatly typed page or rendered as a legal document.

But here we are and I am grateful for the impartiality and fairness of Australian immigration officers. Congratulations to my wife Ann and her daughter JJ. A new dawn today.

A few days ago I was watching the evening news with my usual one eye when a familiar face popped up in the midst of a rally in the CBD. It was the very visage of my friend Martin Wolterding, who was in the process of being dragged by the police from his location in the middle of the road to another place, off camera. Martin and many others were involved in a climate change rally which was disrupting traffic in the Broadway area, sufficient to provoke the cops into needlessly aggressive action. It doesn't take much to get the police riled up and Martin ended up with a swollen arm and a nasty bruise to his side.

You might think that this is the lot of protesters - they will bounce back and be ready for a rally the following day! But Martin is a 75 year old academic who just happens to be passionate about climate change and there were many others of a similar age present too. This is an issue that crosses barriers of this kind and understandably so - survival is something deep within all creatures. Do we really want a planet that becomes increasingly uninhabitable over a relatively short space of time?

The sacrifices are not so great that they cannot be achieved. Still, I have my doubts. My reading of human history and psychology suggests that we will fall short, sufficient to bring disaster upon us. Happy to be proved wrong though!

Exhibit A

spring rain--
in the thicket
a discarded letter blows

Issa

Listening to podcasts occupies a lot of my walking for exercise and commuting time. The list of interesting topics is pretty much endless and I have alluded in previous posts to some of my favourites. Things come in and out of fashion and so does my capacity to listen for extended periods to any one genre. After splurging somewhat on political and historical material for a few years, I have recently turned to science podcasts. Lately I have also been listening to this kind of content on Youtube channels. A big shout-out is due to Isaac Arthur and John Michael Godier for the excellent work they do on their respective channels.

Specifically, I like those that find a kind of comfortable intersection between cosmology and the hypothetical, things that are within the realm of real science but also explore more exotic fields, places more liminal, if you like. I have in mind topics like the Fermi Paradox, Kardashev Civilisations, Dyson Spheres, Boltzmann Brains and so forth. While some of these cross over the boundary into science fiction, all have genuine roots in actual science, meaning that they have the potential to be possible, never mind the odds.

I confess that they can be difficult to understand. Most of the creators of this material are very, very smart people and while they target a general audience, being on one's best thinking behaviour is de riguer. There is no room for switching off. It is hard not to take a mental nap now and then because the material discussed can be difficult to process and retain. Even when I do understand it there is the problem of remembering. I have read at least a dozen times about the theory of Boltzmann Brains but I could not give you a coherent and detailed account of them now.

It is exciting to push yourself to the outer edge of your mental capacity. The pursuit of knowledge is a worthy goal in itself; it requires no justification, only the desire to know more before the lights eventually go out.