Tag: space travel

What Are You Gonna’ Do?

That’s the first thing that popped into my head, this morning. What am I going to do, now? You see, my wife is retiring, and when she leaves her job, she leaves significant amounts of income left unearned. The peace and quiet I am used to having will fade away.

With my lovely and deserving wife retired, that means that she will be available all day, every day, for extended sessions of domestic consultation. Some people would call it nagging, but I am trying to keep on the high road, here. I will not draw any comparisons between marriage and less tasteful situations.

I am an idea man. Hot ideas pop into my head like microwave popcorn. Like, there is no such thing as space travel. We will have to travel between parallel dimensions to get from one side of the universe to the other. Have you done the arithmetic to see how long it takes to travel a million light years at the speed of light? It is a really big number!

So, what happens to all my brilliance if I have a wife hanging around all day informing me of the finer qualities of male servitude?

Retired wives need to be kept busy all the time. If you are rich, you can send her shopping. If not, you can be in big trouble.

Not being rich, I have to be more creative than most curmudgeons of my ilk.

OK. I still have that leaning mail box that needs to be straightened. A little quickcrete and a shovel, and my wife will be busy for a couple of days. I will help by holding the level to make sure the post is vertical.

How about all those bushes that need trimming? Or, how about all those unwanted trees that spring up in the shade of those God-Awful pine trees? I will just turn her loose on them, and she will be good to go.

You see, for every problem there can be a solution. I sure hope my solutions work, or I will be just like Cool Hand Luke being dragged back to the prison farm. We would have failed to communicate.

I am sure she will communicate, over, and over, and over.

History Channel Space Aliens

Can you believe it? The History Channel is running programs that have nothing to do with history, or any facts, either. Shades of Erich von Daniken, Swiss author and devout believer in space aliens as little gods. None of his speculations were based on any set of facts. von Daniken believed that the earth’s ancient cultures had been visited by space aliens.

Now, we have the History Channel buying into that garbage. It is time to set the record straight.

We did not get visitations from space aliens. It didn’t happen that way.

Aliens from other dimensions came for a few visits, and got bored with slave beheading and virgin sacrifices at parties. It was just wrong because the aliens came here for the chicks, anyway.

A space alien would have to come to the planet earth by passing through what we call, outer space. They would have to travel across thousands or millions of light-years, and nobody lives that long. Even if they knew how to do it, space travel would simply cost too much.

Our ancient aliens popped in from another dimension. They had flying machines, and they could bring enough fuel to cruise around the earth for a few months or years. There were no BP stations way back then.

Extra-dimensional aliens look just like us. If some of them do come back, we would not recognize them because they are human.  Surprised? Don’t be.

Returning to their own dimension was a snap, and just as quick as snapping your fingers. We don’t see them anymore because they aren’t interested in us. If they were here we would be invited to their parties. When was the last time you got an invitation from an alien?

Just look at all the so-called evidence which is nothing more than drawings and carvings of ancient people. They look just like us except for hair styles, and the occasional helmet looking thing that is probably just a hat. You know how styles in headwear change over time.

There were likely aliens from several dimensions which accounts for all the different hair and headgear styles seen in rock carvings. This makes more sense than believing in space aliens.

Just because we have no physical evidence of the existence of these other dimensions, at least our mathematicians postulate them. As far as aliens from outer-space is concerned, we don’t even have math to show people exist out there.

The really important thing is that I have never encountered a space alien. In all my space travels I have never met anyone from outside our solar system.

Rocket Man Bob Rides!

drawing of radiation belt
Earth's Magnetic Fields

I was coming in hot, too hot to enter earth’s atmosphere. The rule is to not make any visible trail as you return.

This was a problem because I would have to dump some energy to slow to a decent landing speed. Flashing across the sky, I would cause the local TV station switchboards to light up with hundreds of UFO reports. There would be hell to pay when my commanders figured things out.

That’s what can happen when you jump into alter-space. Alter-space is that place you have to traverse to get to the other side of a fold in the space-time continuum. That is the best way to get from point A to point B in a given galaxy. But, crossing alter-space has its hazards.

Bad folks hang out, there, waiting for careless travelers to appear. In this case I could never identify who or what was doing the shooting and chasing. They were using proton torpedos, and I didn’t want them to get too close.

I was in a real hurry when jumping back to regular space. That’s why I was coming in much too fast for a normal arrival in the metro-Atlanta area. Fortunately, it was after midnight on a Saturday, and most of the witnesses would have little credibility when they admitted to the authorities that alcohol was part of their evening.

As I glided into the driveway of my suburban house, there was a man standing in the front yard. It was Captain Schwartz and he was smoking mad. I could tell by the way he flipped the stub of his cigarette at me as I disembarked from my craft.

As the craft molded itself back into its’ Ford Taurus camouflage shape, Captain Schwartz said, “This little screw-up will cost you plenty, Bobby. You really screwed-the-pooch on this one.”  It was not exactly the first time I had lit up the Atlanta sky, and the Commanders could claim solar flares and northern lights only so many times. The Earth’s magnetic fields shield us from the worst of those solar storms.

“What did you want me to do, take a proton torpedo up the tailpipe? Some hot-dog jumped me in alter-space and I had to do everything I could to get away.”  I said this hoping the Captain would sympathize  with my problem, but that was not going to happen.

“No go, Roberto! I don’ t buy it, and I don’t think the General will, either after that little Santa Claus and his reindeers trick you pulled last Christmas. You need to cool your heels for a couple of weeks. What were you thinking, anyway?” The Captain had me, there. I had been thinking about my childhood, and how I used to dream of space travel.

These things never turn out to be what you thought they would. Space travel is boring as it can be, unless somebody starts shooting at you. Just think. No TV. No satellite music. No iPods. Nothing but absolute dark, and absolute quiet. That’s why it is so tempting to light up a sky, occasionally.

The Captain walked over to the Taurus, reached under the right front fender, and unplugged the anti-matter energy module. There’s enough potential energy in one of those cubic inch modules to start and end World War III. Without it, the Taurus could not become Rocket Man Bob’s space ride. I was grounded.

Dropping the cube it in his pocket, he turned around and said, “Have fun watching TV for the next couple of weeks. Oh! Be sure to catch the local TV news tomorrow morning. Almost every camera in town got your sky streaking routine on video tonight. You’re going nowhere for a while.”

Well, being grounded is what it is. Turning on the television for a much deserved entertainment session, I went straight to the channel guide.

Stay home for a while? No problem. This weekend there’s a  marathon Swamp People showing. Then, starting next week is March Madness.

The NCAA college basketball tournaments will start next week, and everything else comes to a standstill.

Who needs space travel with the most important stuff happening right here on Earth?