Among the problems of space entrepreneurs (public thinking that NASA owns space, lack of funding, getting qualified employees, etc.), one problem is simple discouragement at times. Lack of moral support is another way of expressing the need. Among the Christians in the space entrepreneur community, there is a total lack of spiritual resources. One can attend church but no one there understands what you are doing since they grew up brainwashed by NASA propaganda into thinking that government owns space (it does not). Schools are co-conspirators because they also pass along NASA propaganda (Great future in space!) and we have been waiting over 50 years for them to open up space to ordinary people. Those who were children during Project Mercury are now dead of old age and their grandchildrens grandchildren will still be hearing the same inspirational propaganda centuries from now if we passively wait for government to open up space. No one remembers who built the first canoe but his or her fellow cavemen and cavewomen back in the Stone Age probably respected them for the innovation. Robert Fulton may not have built the first steam powered boat but the point is that his name is remembered because he helped move that mode of transportation forward. Likewise, we remember George Stephenson for helping to develop trains and railroads and Henry Ford in the automobile industry. The Wright Brothers made the first notable airplane flight. What do all these people have in common? 1. They were all private citizens. 2. They all put their own resources or money into it. 3. Within months of their breakthroughs, other people were following their example and improving on the design. In space, Goddard and Tsiolkovsky were shoved aside by government. The astronauts and cosmonauts are public servants and the massively expensive space agencies that do massively expensive space projects are funded by you the public and the taxes you pay and, as a result, after half a century, they have nothing to show for it. No average people in space. No Joe Sixpack in space. Many people dont even believe astronauts ever went to the moon because we cant travel there with current transportation. The NASA folk flatter themselves by calling themselves explorers but machines are not explorers like Magellan and orbiting the Earth in the space station is not exploring the Solar System. It is just going in circles very very fast. Some private citizens have figured out all that I said above and are self-made space entrepreneurs. However, as I said in the opening paragraph, there are setbacks and the news media dances with delight every time private space efforts fail but never expresses skepticism or cynicism at NASAs attempts to own space and to smother any competition. NASA thinks that it is a company albeit one that makes no profit, pays no dividends (I have never gotten a check from them), produces no products you can buy in a store, and provides no service that you could afford. In fact, when Americans tried to pay NASA to go up to space, NASA turned them down and they had to go over to Russia (which was communist at the time) to over-pay for a ride to the Space Station which their and our tax dollars have paid for several times over. But those were space tourists. Some people are business people interested in making space profitable instead of the money pit it now is. Some of these space entrepreneurs are Christians. However, there are no Christian pastors or chaplains for the space business community. Evangelicals do not care about space because there are no people out there to convert or missionize. Pentecostals might have an open mind about the subject. My fellow Fundamentalists tend to assume that science is evil (blasphemy since God created the laws of nature), the Earth is flat, gravity is just a hypothesis, evolution is impossible (which is why they are big into Social Darwinism), and space must be demonic. The last assumption that everything that God makes (heaven and the wonders seen in the Hubble Telescope) is evil is the same as saying that God is Satan ruling over hell. It just does not make logical sense. It does not make emotional sense either. Only a fool can look up at the stars and see anything but beauty. It is not scriptural since the Bible begins Genesis with God creating the universe. Some people even think God cannot be in space. That simply defies Christian theology which says God is omnipresent. God is everywhere. So I hope that I have consigned to the infernal regions any hint that science illiterates have anything useful to say about space science and Biblical illiterates have anything useful to say about Christianity in space. I close with an appeal to well-educated ministers and chaplains to consider a ministry to space entrepreneurs. We dont need that guy from The Right Stuff who only shows up when a test pilot dies so that he can preside at a funeral. We are not about death. We are about bringing dead worlds to life through terraforming. Greening the universe. Making Gardens of Eden and paradises for decent folk. Not just Christians. But certainly Christians need to lead the way in space. Just as we need a ministry or chaplain for space entrepreneurs, we also need a separate ministry or chaplain for space colonization groups (SCGs). After years of seeing space activists (many of them Christians) get discouraged and give up, it finally occurred to me today November 22nd 2014 that they need chaplains to look after their spiritual needs. Not some Neanderthal preacher who thinks space is evil. Not some mortician who just shows up to give elegies at the funerals of test pilots. We need someone like a Norman Vincent Peale, Robert H. Schuller, or Joel Osteen who will encourage us rather than discourage us.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 19:08:33 +0000
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