Union Takes on NASA’s Image Problem with Science Fiction

BALTIMORE - Aug. 1, 2013 - PRLog -- a.      Introduction

After a year’s work, GESTA, IFPTE Local 29 at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland, has announced the successful e-publish of a book of science fiction short stories specifically designed to generate a positive image of space exploration.  The details can be found at:

“Hard Squared Science Fiction, Vol. 01”, “The Dark of the Moon”

http://woodwaredesigns.com/EBook/EBook.html

The stories are designed to generate a positive vision for space exploration for young adults and are now widely available in eight electronic formats for only $2.99.

b.      Details          

The Vision Problem:

To support space exploration and to more generally solve the great problems of the 21^st century, the American people need a strong vision.  Science fiction has historically provided exactly this type of vision and thereby supported most of the great technological advances of the 20^th century, perhaps most clearly Apollo to the Moon.  To address the great problems of the 21^st century, like global warming, the American people now need such vision again.  Science fiction stories can provide that vision, but they most powerfully show this effect if they are written for the purpose rather than positing the meaningless war stories so common in modern movies.

Through this innovative way to build vision, NASA’s unions are planning to make a strong contribution to the strength of NASA and to America’s space exploration program.

“The Dark of the Moon” is a collection of five hard science fiction short stories and three supporting science essays, and also includes a short essay discussing the value of unions to NASA.  This collection is Volume One in a series of e-books called “Hard Squared Science Fiction” that intentionally set out to provide the vision that the American people need to solve the great problems of the 21^st century.

The Stories:

The stories in “The Dark of the Moon” are in two series, one supporting space exploration and the other exploring the symbiotic relationship between man and his machines.

The Andromeda Series has two stories in this volume, the title story “The Dark of the Moon” in which a cosmonaut, having worked himself to a state of exhaustion, has an epiphany on why human beings must explore space.  The second story in this series, “I Want to Know,” is a road trip in which two artificial intelligences, a mother and daughter, must drive an emergency vehicle across Mars to save their human crewmates.  Along the way they delve into what it means to do space exploration in the 21^st century in which physical world action is supported by millions of people back on Earth in a parallel virtual world that runs in near real time.

The Silver Series has three stories starting with “They are Not Coming,” a detective story set in a film noir style.  This series makes the assumption that faster than light travel is not possible, but other civilizations have existed in our galaxy for a very long time, and they know how to use deep time to overcome the vast distances between the stars.  They have time on their side.  

The alien cultures in the Silver Series understand that after the human race achieves a sustainable Earth in the 21^st century, we then will have time to talk to the stars.  Although a first contact story, this series is primarily about human beings evolving a symbiotic relationship with their machines.

The Science:

All these stories are supported by technical discussions at the end of each describing the hard science featured in them and by three science essays covering:  generating buy-in for space exploration, the symbiosis of man and machine, and why these volumes were written.

Apollo to the Moon was one of the greatest examples in history of a country buying into a visionary idea and then achieving it.  Science now knows a lot more about the process of buy-in and how it operates in the human mind.  Can our diverse leaders use this new information to address the great problems of the 21^st century?

Men and machines have much too often been portrayed in a deadly competition, particularly in sci-fi movie blockbuster movies.  This seems to have come from a deep-seated human fear and is the direct consequence of having a master/slave relationship with our machines.  If you hold slaves, you fear slave rebellion.  This has been true throughout history with strong examples in both Rome and the antebellum south.  The solution, fortunately, is very simple:  Do not keep slaves!

This essay describes a powerful alternative to the maser/slave relationship that solves this problem:  it is simply to have a symbiotic relationship.  Such relationships are common in nature, but have rarely been explored for humans in science fiction.  The symbiotic path is clearly a key to a sustainable Earth, and the American people need the vision to explore that path.

New Tool:

The unions have now built a new tool for vision-building for NASA’s mission and thereby building strength for NASA’s unions.  The unions now need to work out how they can powerfully use this new tool.  The author encourages all unions in the aerospace industry to join the NASA unions who developed this to join them in developing uses for this new tool and in writing future volumes.

Reference:

National Research Council, “NASA’s Strategic Direction, and the need for a National Consensus”, (National Academies Press, 2013) http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18248&utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=The%20National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=NAP+mail+new+1.08.13&utm_content=Downloader&utm_term=