According to this recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 38% of respondents would personally want to live to age 120, while they thought 68% of most respondents would like to live to that age.
That got me thinking, would I like to live to 120? I think I would, as long as I'm healthy enough to live fairly independently.
My 120th birthday is May 19, 2089. This means that I will have lived through (most of) the second half of the 20th century, and almost all of the 21st. That is pretty cool. Let's take a quick look ahead at how life will be then:
Technology
With home TVs getting bigger and bigger, and more 3-D technology coming out, we actually have the long awaited (by me, anyway) Star Trek style holodeck/suite.
Robotics have advanced to the point where they really have some human personality traits and emotions. They are used for all manner of civilian and military purposes. There are some who abuse our robotic tech, but thankfully there has yet to be rebellion.
Transportation
We finally got the flying cars we were promised so many years ago- and it's self driving, which is good. I can work on my 20,000th blog post and 10th book along the way. (I'm writing more since I retired back in 2035.)
We have self driving trains too. And transporters.
Space Travel
Sadly, I have to say that we still have not started a manned mission to Mars. But Virgin Galactic and US Spaceways are going strong, with many daily round trips to the Moon. Both companies have hubs in Boston, Las Vegas, and the Kennedy Space Center.
Politics
Soon, I will be voting in my 25th presidential election. Haven't missed a vote yet.
Medicine
Except for the common cold, all the major diseases are cured, and we have long had the tech needed for an old friend's cryogenic-frozen head to be attached to a new body.
Entertainment
With the holotech we have now, Reality TV has taken on a whole new meaning--yes, this type of show is still on the air, and it sucks worse than ever.
As for me personally, as one might expect, I'm still volunteering at the Museum of Science-Boston. It must be, what, 80 some-odd years now.
Overall, life is pretty good here. There are still conflicts and problems--we are human, after all. But life has gotten better. We finally got a hold of what our technology and we ourselves can do.
Well, that's my little look at what life may be like in 2089. How about you? Do you even want to live to 120? If so, what do you think life will be like? The comments page is open.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Rocket Girl by George Morgan
Mary Sherman Morgan was born a poor farm girl from North Dakota. She would grow up to singlehandedly save the American space program.
But before we get to that, we have to start at the beginning--Mary's funeral. That's where George Morgan, Mary's son, met Mary's long ago co-worker Walter. "You need to tell her story," Walter told him, "You need to let people know the truth. Don't let her die nameless."
George, the Playwright in Residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) took up the challenge. He didn't know much about his mother, she didn't allow many photos to be taken of her, and "the Morgans are terrible record keepers". After years of painstaking research, the play Rocket Girl was staged at the Institute. The play got very positive, and a great amount of, press. The people wanted--needed-- to know more. Thus, this book, Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist was born.
The book is written as a novel in the creative nonfiction style. This means that the story and people are real, but some of the details and dialog have to be "created", made up, by the writer. For me, this made this one of the most readable biographies in the last few years. If I didn't know that it's a biography, I would believe it just as a good novel.
It is a well written and researched book. George spoke with many of Mary's collegues, friends, and relatives, and searched records in the US, Germany, and Russia. Rocket Girl is also an important book. As Dr. Ashley Stroupe of the Jet Propultion Labratory talks about in the forward, Mary worked during a time when most men were off to war. When they came home, women were expected to leave work and go back home (or into teaching). Mary refused to do this, and she was accepted for it. Dr Stroupe herself continued Mary's legacy, becoming, in 2005, the first woman to remotely drive a vehicle on an extra-terrestrial body.
But this is not simply a biography of one person, it is a biography of the early days of the space race itself. As World War II ends and the Cold War begins, we see the two sides lining up. On one side, we have Mary, the US military, and Wernher von Braun; on the other, Stalin, the politboro, and Sergei Korolev-the USSR's answer to von Braun. As we all know, the Soviets won the first shot with Sputnik, but thanks to Mary and her team, we quickly caught up.
And, what exactly did she do? As a chemical analyst with North American Aviation--now Aeorjet-Rocketdyne--she came up with the perfect fuel for von Braun's rocket. (We learn from another co-worker that an "analyst" is an "engineer" with no college degree. Same job, less pay.) This is something even von Braun's own people couldn't do. North American Aviation called it HYDYNE. Along the way, we learn much about the inner workings of rocket science, government contracts, and working for a company under government contract.
By reading this book, I learned alot about the "science" in "rocket science", but more importantly, I learned about one of the unsung scientists in the first half of the 20th century. Without Mary Sherman Morgan, who knows how long it would have been before there would be a NASA, a space shuttle, or any kind of US space program. Furthermore, it shows how much times have changed-for the better. There were women in science before Mary Morgan, but not many. That is not the case today.
George Morgan accomplished his goal. His mother did not die nameless.
But before we get to that, we have to start at the beginning--Mary's funeral. That's where George Morgan, Mary's son, met Mary's long ago co-worker Walter. "You need to tell her story," Walter told him, "You need to let people know the truth. Don't let her die nameless."
George, the Playwright in Residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) took up the challenge. He didn't know much about his mother, she didn't allow many photos to be taken of her, and "the Morgans are terrible record keepers". After years of painstaking research, the play Rocket Girl was staged at the Institute. The play got very positive, and a great amount of, press. The people wanted--needed-- to know more. Thus, this book, Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist was born.
The book is written as a novel in the creative nonfiction style. This means that the story and people are real, but some of the details and dialog have to be "created", made up, by the writer. For me, this made this one of the most readable biographies in the last few years. If I didn't know that it's a biography, I would believe it just as a good novel.
It is a well written and researched book. George spoke with many of Mary's collegues, friends, and relatives, and searched records in the US, Germany, and Russia. Rocket Girl is also an important book. As Dr. Ashley Stroupe of the Jet Propultion Labratory talks about in the forward, Mary worked during a time when most men were off to war. When they came home, women were expected to leave work and go back home (or into teaching). Mary refused to do this, and she was accepted for it. Dr Stroupe herself continued Mary's legacy, becoming, in 2005, the first woman to remotely drive a vehicle on an extra-terrestrial body.
But this is not simply a biography of one person, it is a biography of the early days of the space race itself. As World War II ends and the Cold War begins, we see the two sides lining up. On one side, we have Mary, the US military, and Wernher von Braun; on the other, Stalin, the politboro, and Sergei Korolev-the USSR's answer to von Braun. As we all know, the Soviets won the first shot with Sputnik, but thanks to Mary and her team, we quickly caught up.
And, what exactly did she do? As a chemical analyst with North American Aviation--now Aeorjet-Rocketdyne--she came up with the perfect fuel for von Braun's rocket. (We learn from another co-worker that an "analyst" is an "engineer" with no college degree. Same job, less pay.) This is something even von Braun's own people couldn't do. North American Aviation called it HYDYNE. Along the way, we learn much about the inner workings of rocket science, government contracts, and working for a company under government contract.
By reading this book, I learned alot about the "science" in "rocket science", but more importantly, I learned about one of the unsung scientists in the first half of the 20th century. Without Mary Sherman Morgan, who knows how long it would have been before there would be a NASA, a space shuttle, or any kind of US space program. Furthermore, it shows how much times have changed-for the better. There were women in science before Mary Morgan, but not many. That is not the case today.
George Morgan accomplished his goal. His mother did not die nameless.
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