Freesoft 1998 January/Freesoft_1998-01_cd.bin/Nerecenz/Multimedia/CS/HUMOR.ZIP/hope.txt

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From: Alfred½E╗[e-mail] (Alfred½E╗Newman ╗╗╗╗╗╗╗╗╗╗╗{ JUST CALL ME AL }½½½½½½½½½½½╢:C:\opñen;forºth;srv;wri;púri;fieñld;sta■ck;addr;u nix;ld╡r┼regr;e╩nt;ping;svÑr;redirct;@dns;file:\σ|cn48937.2816|;stoñ;retn;pingδ;alt;coºok╤ie;addr;fn▄d;rst;sta├ck;:╢)
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Subject: ..............FOR ALL OF US............... - hope.txt [1/1]
Date: 12 Oct 1997 05:28:18 GMT
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***********************************************************************
Everyone on earth should read this short story. It's a beautiful wake-up
call for the jerks who think pollution can go on forever... And, it makes
each one of us think hard about "LIFE" -and what that word really means!!
---
Please be patient with "yourself" as you read! If there is a word or idea
you don't understand, ask someone to help you with it -or- open up your
dictionary and find the answer... Don't give up reading it!... There are
some very important things to learn in this story and YES, it really is,
"THAT" important...
---
To A. H. Wakamatsu, the author... Thank you for letting us "see" a small
piece of your soul. With people like you in this world, we may still have
a chance to "learn"... The EARTH is, indeed, the MOTHER of us all...
---
Note: If you have trouble with the word wrap, highlight the whole story
and then copy and paste it into Notepad -or- click "file" then "save as"
and store it on your hard drive as hope.txt then "open" it with Notepad
when you want to read it...
                                ---ALF---
***********************************************************************







                             CASSINI
                       A Message To Nobody

                               by
                         A. H. Wakamatsu





     The final end came like hammer blows upon one's heart.
We had tracked the string of asteroids for thirty eight hours,
the problem was we had no way to divert them, we were helpless.
So unerringly they came, minuscule missiles of detritus, bound for this
pitiful lunar refuge.  It had been five extremely hectic years and now it
seems for naught; regrettably several utility buildings were damaged, but
the parting blow was the direct meteor hit to our backup nuclear reactor.
 And because of this accident our fledgling moon colony is doomed,
henceforth all of humanity is doomed.
        Doom started eight years ago when the Cassini spacecraft instead
of swinging by Earth as planned, crashed back into the atmosphere and
burnt up, thereby distributing seventy-two point three pounds of
plutonium into the stratosphere of Earth, August 20, 1999.  Instantly
doom became a way of life.
        Just one pound of plutonium distributed in our atmosphere can
bestow upon everyone on this planet fatal lung cancer, seventy pounds of
plutonium appears to be a significant amount, at least enough to
sterilize Earth of all breathing creatures, so far.  Like the media said
it couldn't have been any better if we scientists had planned to expunge
Earth of all life except plants, bacteria and viruses, and eventually,
even they will be hard pressed to survive the onslaught of the relentless
radiation.
        To tell you the truth, back when the mission was being designed,
we at NASA were more concerned about the launch; the Cassini mission
would have sent one of the largest and heaviest robotic spacecraft ever
built on a seven year journey to Saturn.
        Back in the early nineties, JPL had given us several trajectory
scenarios, the optimum involved Cassini first being launched towards the
inner planet Venus, using the planet's gravity as an assist to slingshot
the vehicle back towards Earth, then subsequently past Jupiter.
        These close flybys were designed to impart enough energy to
Cassini to reach Saturn and establish an orbit around the ringed planet.
 To have any success, because of the relative positions of the planets,
Cassini's launch window was between October 6, 1997 and November 4, 1997,
any later and the mission would have been degraded somewhat.  But as
anyone knows who's in the business of space exploration, the launch is
the real scary part.
        Even with the gravity assists, Cassini is so massive, (two
stories tall and weighing in at 6,000kg-13,000lbs) to accomplish liftoff
and placement into the correct trajectory we at NASA had to cobble
together a military Titan IV launch vehicle with two newly developed
strap-on solid rocket motors, and a powerful Centaur upper stage,
creating essentially a four stage rocket.
        And this was where the public centered most of their protests.  A
failure at launch time could expose the public to nominal health hazards
if any of the three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, RTGs, leaked
plutonium at that time.  However extensive testing by the Department of
Energy has demonstrated the effectiveness of RTGs in containing their
plutonium in case there was a launch accident.
        Ironically the swing-by of Earth in 1999 was supposed to be the
safer risk with an inadvertent atmospheric reentry a million to one
chance.  When I think about it though, I used to buy lottery tickets with
odds of thirteen million to one, in hopes of winning.
        As a scientist you start to wonder about the progression and
direction our decision tree took, that led to the destruction of life as
we once knew it.  RTGs have been used on twenty three previous U.S. space
missions, including the Apollo missions to the moon, the Pioneer missions
to Jupiter and Saturn, the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Ulysses
solar mission.  Perhaps though we should have more closely examined our
failures and mistakes: Apollo 13, SkyLab, the Nimbus B Weather Satellite,
 Challenger, the Hubble, the Mars Observer, and the Tethered Satellite
Space Shuttle mission.
        These are just the major ones, add in all the failed military
missions and minor snafu's and the questionable reliability of the Titan
IV booster and you start to wonder what we were thinking.  Not to mention
Russia's fiasco when one of their satellites failed to stay in orbit and
plunged into the Siberian countryside spreading radioactive isotopes over
a 400,000 acre area.  Obviously the roots of our decision tree were
rotten from the very beginning, and we had just been very lucky in the
past.
        Now however, I can see clearly how we were romanced into
believing that what we were doing was the proper thing.  First there is
Saturn, the mysterious seductress herself, the crowning jewel of the
solar system.  As an astro-physicist any opportunity one could concoct to
accrue more data on Saturn and its intricate system of moons, moonlets
and rings seem to be appropriate.  The clues to the formation of the
solar system and other solar systems could be concealed in that data.
The wealth of data Cassini would have brought back, we astro-physicists
would have killed for, readily, like spellbound fools.
        Another factor was the time constraints, it was either now or
never, the JPL trajectories demanded a strict timetable.  Perhaps with
more time an alternative like the ultra-sensitive solar cells developed
by the Europeans could have been utilized. Unfortunately the project from
the beginning had been planned using the RTGs because of the heavy
electrical demands of the Cassini instrument platform.
        This list of instruments includes: an imaging science subsystem,
a ground mapping radar, a radio science subsystem, an ion and neutral
mass spectrometer, a visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, a
composite infrared spectrometer, a cosmic dust analyzer, a radio and
plasma wave spectrometer, a plasma spectrometer, an ultraviolet imaging
spectrometer, a magnetospheric imaging instrument and finally, a dual
technique magnetometer.  In our avariciousness for new astronomical data,
we scientists scaled up the project to its present size, jeopardizing all
of humanity.
        Sometimes I can't stop thinking that Saturn with all its alluring
beauty and complexity was some kind of bait for an evil inter-stellar,
cosmic rat trap.
        If all things had gone even modestly okay, by June, 2004, Cassini
would have commenced its Saturn Orbit Insertion Maneuver, firing its main
engines and decelerating, finally reaching its mission objective of
orbiting Saturn.  God, we would've been just swimming in pools of joyous,
precious data by then.
        By late 2004, Cassini would have released the Huygens probe,
which was designed and built by the European Space Agency.  Deploying
drogue chutes, its purpose was to descend towards Saturn's moon Titan,
penetrate Titan's thick and enigmatic atmosphere and hopefully send data
back about its composition.
        The Huygens probe itself carried: a descent imager and spectral
radiometer, an atmospheric structure instrument, a gas chromatograph, a
mass spectrometer, an aerosol collector pyrolzyer, a surface science
package and a doppler wind experiment.  What can I say, we were loaded
for bear, folks, with hot-blooded data as our target goal.
        Titan with its atmosphere of oxygen, nitrogen and complex
molecules has always intrigued us as perhaps being a model of what
primordial Earth might have been; the Huygens probe could have given us
essential clues to how our planet might have evolved.  The probe's life
would be atmospheric only; it's resting place will probably be at the
bottom of an ocean of liquid methane.
        This kamikaze probe was named after the Dutch scientist Christian
Huygens who discovered Titan in the middle sixteen hundreds; he was also
the inventor of the pendulum based clock.  The ill-fated mothercraft,
Cassini, was named after the French-Italian astronomer Jean-Dominique
Cassini who discovered four of Saturn's other moons in the late sixteenth
century: Dione, Iapetus, Rhea and Tethys.  Cassini also discovered the
major split between the rings of Saturn, now known as the Cassini
Division.  So much for history and fate.
        It's weird but even now I yearn for this data.  The flyby of the
Saturn moon Enceladus might have yielded hints as to why it is so
abnormally smooth, devoid of craters.  Iapetus, the yang and yin of
Saturn's moons, has a highly reflective bright white side and a strangely
too dark black side, with the division unaccountably distinct.  Why is
this so?  Cassini would have fed our insatiable cravings for this
knowledge.  Now we will never know.  The failure of the mission was such
an insufferable blow to the whole scientific astronomic community.
        The launch of the Cassini probe to Saturn was controversial at
the onset.  By the time the launch date came around, an army of
protesters surrounded Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Greenpeace, Amnesty
International, all the biggies were there, protesting the use of
plutonium for Cassini's electrical power source.  One poor soul even
poured gasoline on himself and self-immolated (please, don't try this at
home).
        Hey, like I said, we've routinely utilized plutonium to power
satellites in the past.  However it is true that seventy- two pounds was
a record usage.  And now I wish, I wish to the almighty that we had
descended from our ivory tower and really contemplated what those
protesters were protesting about.  We just cavalierly dismissed their
frenetic ravings, smugly assuming that they knew little about the
important work we were accomplishing.  They were just crazies and weirdos
to us, and ultimately the successful launch and Venus cruise portion of
the mission justified our opinions, that is until the Earth swing-by in
1999.
        Basically as far as we could tell the accident was precipitated
by a software glitch.  Because of budgetary and time constraints, Ops
decided that some procedural and instrument control software could be
sent to Cassini while swinging by Earth and on its way to Jupiter.  Now
believe me, we aren't total imbeciles.  Using an exact duplicate computer
on Earth we debugged the hell out of every line of code, or so we
thought.  I guess we have just got to realize that, as godlike as our
capabilities are, we aren't.  In fact we are sometimes the biggest myopic
dopes, spouting off about super strings, wormholes, heavy dark cold
invisible matter and Higgs Bosons like they really exist, when in fact
they most likely don't.
        The truth is, we scientists are not mature enough to strive
without ego.  We ignore the tough puzzles of space and time like Bell's
theorem, the fact that photons act like a particle or a wave and that our
own observation can actually affect an experiment, and we merrily go
about our mundane and presumably concrete ways, pushing our pet theories
upon the public like bragging, mendacious children, when we should really
be screaming to the world that, hey, we live in a vaporous reality of
trickery and deceit.  Watch out, as we don't have a clue as to what is
really happening!
        Sorry, I'm getting a little off track here.  To continue: it
wasn't exactly the software that caused poor Cassini to plunge towards
Earth, it was the upload (still no excuses).  When Cassini approached
Earth, because of the amount of autonomy built into its computer, it
behaved like a spoiled child (we think).  When we proceeded to upload the
software at high baud rates, the computer balked then rebooted, mid file.
 The failsafes, solid state caches and redundant looping we provided the
onboard computer with failed to prevent it from crashing.
        For some damn strange reason, after the cold reboot, the computer
thought it was enroute to Jupiter, so it ordered Cassini to initiate the
Deep Space Maneuver, resulting in the firing of its main engine, fueled
by a bipropellant of mono-methyl-hydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide.  The
only problem was Cassini wasn't in deep space; it was in a nearby
swing-by trajectory with the High Gain Antenna oriented directly towards
Earth.  The High Gain Antenna was built in a fixed position, at the front
or top of the spacecraft, so this required us to have to point the whole
mess at Earth, to receive the high data rates of our software
transmission upload as it swung by.
        By the time we realized that something was perilously going
wrong, it was too late.  Even the combination of the stabilizing
thrusters and reaction wheels could not rotate the space vehicle
expeditiously enough to reachieve at least an orbit around Earth. Instead
it plummeted like a rocket propelled rock, hitting the atmosphere and
burning up over the width of good ol' U.S.A., with some debris landing
off the coast of California, consequently creating the biggest disaster
since the great K/T boundary event occurred.  This was that huge meteor
that impacted near the Yucatan peninsula, dug out the Chicxulub crater,
covered the world in dust and annihilated the dinosaurs.  Our hope that
the ceramic pellets of plutonium would break up into large uninhaleable
chunks, vanished quickly, as unfortunately Cassini skipped a little when
it hit our atmosphere, causing most of the craft to vaporize in a
prolonged fiery reentry.

        "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from
heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the
rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.  And the name of the star was
named Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and
many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
        Revelation, Chapter 8, Verses 10 & 11

        The effect was instantaneous, "Nuke" riots raged in the cities
world wide, suicide parties became trendy.  The pissed off public was
determined to have swift retribution, so all top Nasa and JPL officials
were promptly rounded up and shot.  It was either that or a complete
stepping down of the specific governments.  The trust between governments
and those that they had governed had ended forever, universally and
bitterly.  In other words, happiness was basically off of everyone's
agenda, permanently.  Luckily for me, I hadn't received the promotion I
was expecting at NASA.
        Funnily, the greatest irony of all isn't that the unfortunate
Cassini reentry occurred just months before the turn of the millennium,
(well maybe that too), but that the degraded plutonium used in Cassini's
RTGs was bought as surplus from the Russians!  NASA didn't have enough
plutonium to fuel Cassini so instead of using the aging breeder reactor
at the Fast Flux Test Facility in Hanford to process more PU-238, they
decided that it was far cheaper to buy it at the bargain rate of only
$1.2 million per kilogram from the Soviets.
        Imagine, a consortium of nations, U.S.A., France, Italy and other
European nations, basically all of NATO, gathered together to spread
(albeit accidentally) Russian plutonium all over the whole damn world,
something during the cold war, we spent trillions and trillions of
dollars and many lives trying to prevent.  Isn't hindsight a real hoot!

        Of course air filtration became the watchword of the day.
Overnight we became transformed into goggle-eyed and canister- breathing
beings, costumed alien clowns dying on a deadly dying planet.
Unfortunately in the end, filtration was basically a joke and underground
survival shelters were simply dirt coffins.
        Early on, the elaborate underground SAC bunkers in Washington
D.C. and Colorado, jam-packed with frightened top military officials and
elite rich, were rooted out, by the use of atomics (who cared by then?);
the handiwork of the rogue armies of the now infamous Jefferies and
Jamesion.  Their motto was, "If I'm going to die, you're sure as hell
going to die too".
        And yet it wasn't specifically lung cancer that drove us to our
graves, it was our daily appetite and thirst.  All food and water sources
had become contaminated, so at first, governments around the world
started to destroy all food crops and banned people from drinking the
contaminated public waters, but quickly we found out that it was better
to eat and drink radioactively contaminated food and water, then to
suffer without.  So we ate and drank and then we died.
        And we were worried about global warming.
        So the dust particles of plutonium isotopes rained down, and we
died good, billions of decent, innocent people queued up to die at
government euthanasia centers.  This insidious, invisible dust plague of
death caused all sorts of internal cancers, lung cancer, skin cancer,
cancer upon cancer, mutation upon mutation. We died horrible deaths; we
died like sterile flies.
        Because my boss was head of Operations, I became head of Nasa Ops
by attrition.  Out of the feelings of recompense, and honestly to keep
NASA from becoming defunct and to keep me and my remaining colleagues
alive, the first thing I did was to propose that we start a colony on the
moon.
        Surprisingly the public (what was left of it), fell in love with
the idea.  It was portrayed as our only hope of keeping a pure genetic
strain of humanity alive.  However, anyone with a little science
background knew that a permanent moon colony would have to deal with
enormous obstacles just to survive.  The real success of the project was
that it brought the slimmest of hopes to fruition.
        So the work began in earnest in the year 2003.  We expended every
iota of the world's assets to complete this gargantuan project. China and
Japan furnished electronics and chassis parts for the one-way space
shuttles, Thailand and Malaysia the chemical fuels and propulsive
systems, Australia contributed by creating and building moon shelters and
precious semi-plutonium free food and water.  Every technologically
capable nation sincerely contributed, as these motions proved to be a
catharsis for our souls.
        So the shuttles were built, shelters designed, and our pitiful
exodus began, five grueling years of frantic labor, with the constant
pressure of the possible inevitable extinction of our species gnawing on
our consciousness.  But for once in the history of humankind, we, the
proud people of this forsaken, resplendent planet, finally worked
together in peace to achieve a common nonviolent goal (more irony for
you).  This project became the symbolic salvation for a horribly
destroyed, mutated planet, a planet devastated by the pomposity of us
scientists.  Who could ever forgive us!
        But forgive us the public did, never mind that we caused this
catastrophic rain of death.  The promise of a moon colony free from the
plutonium dust was enough to give some hope, (and us surviving scientists
a reprieve, whew!).  That only seven hundred would be picked to inhabit
the colony, and the fact that the colony had only one chance in a million
in lasting fifty years did not deter the public from remaining enamored
with the moon project.
        It just goes to show the beauty and strength of our people, how
hope can grow and persevere with the most paltry of chances of success.
        But now we scientists have failed again, the primary reactor core
failed last month and is irreparable, and now our backup has taken a
direct hit from a fist sized meteor.  With improvisation we may last five
or six months.  Unfortunately we still lack the ability to produce
machined parts, parts needed to rebuild at least one of the distillers;
the shuttles from Earth ceased before they could deliver the furnaces and
lathes needed.  Again another deadly miscalculation.  May God forgive us
in the afterlife.
        Perhaps in retrospect, God in his greatest wisdom is being
merciful.  Because of the radiation, most of the equipment that was
shuttled up to us is hot and useless anyway.  A generation would not even
pass before the cancers and mutations start erupting again.  Maybe the
deepest truth is to never fully trust your scientists.  After all, our
job is to guess about things we don't know.
        So let this be a warning to possible future alien races who may
visit our doomed planet in the future, control your scientists, err on
the side of safety and surety, don't let the sanctity of knowledge
dissuade you from making progress in a safe and sane manner.  The search
for knowledge should not be a suicide mission for your whole race.
Specifically, getting new data from Saturn was not worth destroying our
home planet, believe me.
        Of course, if some alien race does come upon our sterile world,
years from now, and they realize what happened, I can't help wondering
just how hard they will laugh at how insanely stupid we were, or maybe
they'll just simply thank their own God, for providing them with a
pristine vacant planet, perfect for procreating more of their own
progeny.  May you cherish better what we squandered.  Strange how one's
mind thinks at such times.

        And now we come full circle, the final blow delivered.  What was
thought to be a slim but noble chance of survival on the surface of the
moon, now concludes with a woeful but dramatic end.
        We called the asteroid string, the Willy-Jose asteroids, named
after the two maintenance personnel who were doing some amateur star
gazing forty hours ago.  Using the lunar base's telescope, they peered up
at the deep dark lunar sky, and said, "Hey, what in the world is that?".
 The asteroids looked like innocent specks of lights, a string of tiny
brilliant pearls, headed for our settlement, bound for the deepest parts
of our hearts.
        Once confirmed, we exiles knew we were in big trouble. Telemetry
quickly confirmed that indeed these wandering pebbles in our lunar sky
were coming directly for our colony.  Thanks to our Lidar doppler radar
satellites encircling the moon, we knew to within half a hectare, where
these diminutive rocks of providence would come down.  We just had no
time or way to do a damn thing about it.
        So early this morning the asteroids arrived, like the pale horses
of the apocalypse, slamming indifferently into the lunar surface and our
refuge, here a chunk, there a chunk, annihilating the last hopes of
humankind forever.
        With my wife by my side, surrounded by colleagues and friends,
together we humbly and numbly viewed our fate from our fragile moon
shelter, the moment immortalized by the beauty of our own destruction.
        Fittingly, Earth has just begun to set upon the lunar horizon.
The dust from the meteoric explosions has diffracted the sunlight,
creating an unreal prismatic halo to form around the image of our
precious Earth.  Inside me, feelings of great joy and grief well up and
mix, fighting like old contentious friends.
        I wish I could just pluck you from the heavens that surround you,
Mother Earth, and cradle you in my hands, treating you with the care,
solace and attention that you beyond all deserve, nursing you back to
health and happiness, washing all this badness away.  But sadly I have no
such powers, and unluckily the wishing and praying ended a long time ago,
with no miracles resolving.
        So I say goodbye to you old girl, dear home planet we all loved,
you gorgeous lapis lazuli goddess, cobalt orb of mother life; I'll never
have the privilege again of stepping barefoot upon your green grasses,
smelling your private scents, swimming in your sapphire seas, or enjoying
your spectacular vistas anymore, but I thank you dearly, dearly for my
cherished memories of you.
        Long may only the clearest and sweetest waters run over your
venerable iron core.
        Hopefully, one day, true sentient life will spring from your
fertile, verdant loins. Evidently, we were not worthy.



Copyright 1996, all rights reserved:  However you may copy this story and
give it to a friend, but if you want to publish this story in any form
you must attain my express permission.

Email at:  [e-mail]

Please no spam or hate mail, this is just a short story, hope you enjoyed
it!

A. H. Wakamatsu



References

HTTP//WWW.NASA.gov (Cassini)
Cassini Draft Environmental Impact Statement, NASA 10/20/94
Holy Bible