Our little Space Station Called Earth

Well I have decided to keep this blog. However, it will longer contain anything personal about my life, other than my thoughts on things going on in the world outside my window.

Today the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Cape Canaveral, after many delays, without a hitch. This mission is extremely important to NASA because it is the first in a long time to carry a payload to the International Space Station http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
This mission is also important to Canada, because both Canada arms will be used. The first arm is located in the docking bay of the shuttle, and the new arm that was installed awhile ago, is on the Space Station. On this mission the arm on the shuttle will "pass" the payload from shuttle to the arm on the station. It has been nicknamed the Great Canadian Handshake.

These two instruments form a fundamental and necessary part to the International Space program. As a Canadian I am proud that although we do not have our own vehicle to explore and experiment in space, we are still able to develop technologies and instrumentation that is sought after by other agencies and the world community as a whole.

For those of you who know me, you know I can be a little anti-american or anti-war or whatever you want to call it. As of late I have found myself also being kind of anti-capitalism and I am not sure where or when that started to take route, but in an attempt to curb my anti-capitalism thoughts I have decided to go back and read some more Ann Rand.

Back in the day when I was a pro-capitalist two of my favorite books were Atlas Shrugged and The FountainHead. That was not a long time ago. For my latest reading I have chosen her book entitled "Capitalism, The unknown ideal". So far it is an excellent piece of scholorship. Now, you might be asking yourself "what does any of this have to do with the Shuttle" Well let me tell you.

Basically the Space Shuttle and the project of building the Space Station is a remarkable feat of capitalism. In a day and age when war shows us the darker side of the fight to gain new markets so capitalism can grow, it is nice to see an effort that shows the pinnacle of what can occur when free markets work together. These projects are not just a beacon of light for the sciences they are also an expression of community. When nations from around the world can work together on such a complicated project it shows us truly that the stars are the limit.

It is unfortunate that efforts to master the sciences seem more achievable than our efforts to build a healthy community in our own back yard. I guess whats almost ironic about it is, is the thought of what will happen when we do build a "homestead" out in space. Will the astronauts on those larger ships of the future close the hatch doors to prevent less desirable astronauts from coming into the parts of the station that they have laid claim to. Will those astronauts hoard food, or use it to fuel their own little experiments, while others on the station lay rotting in bays and hangers around the station.

It seems to me that Capitalism is a great system for creating things. It is the only system that provides the rights and the freedoms for us to fully Master anything. However, for Capitalism to fully be a new world religion, we are going to have to do something first. That something is basically "getting along with and respecting each other". And it appears to me that in the thousands of years of civilization, that is something that has never really got off the ground. ANd thus even Capitalism seems poised to fail.

I should also point out, that at the most fundamental level, there are many things going on with our modern form of Capitalism that do not resemble Capitalism at all. What I see today in the world is an emerging Corporatism which stands in juxtposition to Democracy and Capitalism, and seem to be taking us back to something closer to feudalism, with corporations filling the role of the vassal,but that is a discussion for another day.