There’s the suits, which I first saw in close-up images of the astronauts’ faces in NASA’s marketing announcement. Smooth, sleek composite, in the shape of something that is supposed to cut through air. Narrow oval visors windowing onto the faces of two savagely determined men, with skills so comprehensive they could both take down a wooly mammoth and talk with the great spirits.
There’s the starship’s interior: seats suspended in space, appearing as though they were conceived by the kinds of designers who care about how things feel to the eyes. The big, blue, glowing screens, crowded with lines of data, replete with informational images, raptly communing with the minds fo the two starpilots tapping and scrolling with casual command.
The exterior, too: rounded and bright and smooth. Named dragon. Rocket boosters that slow themselves down in tandem to alight on the ground, like they were supporting the Millennium Falcon, coming to rest on the Cloud City landing pad.
The fact that space flight – the only unvarnished good available to all imaginations in equal measure, the leaving of the cave, the moving to a new country to get away from an abusive school, a change in perspective when we are so, so exhausted by the view from where we are – the fact that it now looks right, that it actually resembles our century’s worth of imagination about space travel, is one of the coolest things that has ever happened in history.
To be saying that today, on this weekend, in this year; well, what a beautiful tragedy we all live in.