Poets in Space

Is there a use for poetry in space?

Can the language of apogee, perigee, declination, right ascension, thrust vectors, newtonian mechanics and lagrangian points harbour those for whom words are a means to an artistic end? And not a means of requesting more oxygen be let into somewhere from a valve to ensure the survival of pocket humanity against the vast all but emptiness of space.

Space loves capital punishment, and is the harshest of hanging judges. Who can need beautiful wordsmiths where a single mistake of prosaic human or engineering frailty results in certain death.

Everything is checklist, double checklist, instruction manual and zero gravity suction lavatory. The incredible Commander Hadfield took beautiful photographs and sang a little Bowie, but if he had started declaiming Homer while bowing on a lyre, his fellow astronauts would have bundled him out of the airlock faster than you can say “tin can”.

Yet, when humanity does colonise the stars and planets, the arts will have to play a part. A society will surely go mad without them, without an outlet to perform and express. The all encompassing sterility of space must have an antidote; steel domes and plastic furniture won't be enough.

And so, in addition to the square jawed heroes, science nerds, brilliant women, engineers, doctors and folk who's hair looks good in zero gravity, so there will need to stained trouser artists, dusty sculptors, and lank haired writers in tweed jackets with elbow patches. And the poets, space berets and polo necks, astro beatniks, will have to go to.

It seems strange to think of it, but it is true. Mars needs poets.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 05.04.14

Playing Tennis on the Moon

I've been having the most vivid dreams as of late, often rather nightmarish, often downright strange, but last night's was pure fun for a change.

For some reason, to commemorate the London 2012 Olympics, the LOCOG people were inviting people to go to an olympics base on the moon for £20. You had to wear black tie for some reason, and of the journey itself, I remembered nothing because "the human mind could not comprehend it." The lunar base itself had no windows - perhaps it was all a Capricorn One type illusion - and was all metallic inside.

I played a game of tennis with a lunar resident, a long legged female tennis player, and despite the low gravity, the game was dead slow, with the tennis balls barely bouncing. I could barely hit the ball over the net. Recognising this disaster, I was invited to play Moon Pool, which involved a triangular table, with holes around the pointy end rather reminiscent of bar billiards. Hanging over the table was a basket ball net, under which was a netting bag filled with fruit and mushrooms. This, apparently, was for "Fruit Basketball".

Fruit Basketball!!! Shades of Zig and Zag.

This has got me wondering however. We are constantly reminded how astronauts on long missions must constantly exercise in order to maintain musculo-skeletal integrity and vascular performance; to this end they spend hours a day in space on boring looking treadmills and similar devices. I remember Skylab had a primitive sort of hand cycling device.

This is just not going to be stimulating enough in the long run - the long mission astronauts of the future will want to play more competitive sports. I figured some sort of variant of squash or handball would be a possible option - doesn't require a huge amount of space, and would probably be enhanced by playing in a weightless situation. Badminton's a non starter, so is volleyball, but no doubt it would still be a spectacular sport for the naturist astronauts of the future. Darts would be cool in zero g, but not very strenuous, and hey, watch those windows and vital systems.

Perhaps you could play ping pong, but in a sort of square tunnel with a net all the way round. That might just work!