Friday, April 10, 2009

A Journey Into the Abyss

Over the past thousands of year man has evolved from it's ancestor into an upright walking, higher thought processing, social creature. We have since conquered Terra firma, sailed the seas, and even became proficient in flight. As we look into the beyond above, we see what seems to be an endless black. An abyss. What may be the final hardship of man would be space colonization. But as Kubric's 2001 A Space Odyssey cryptically displayed to us, to be the masters of space we must first relearn how to be man. Tasks as rudimentary as eating, walking, and breathing become life functions that must be processed by us like when we were infants. And with man being the dominant creature on Earth, and likely the first to conquer space, it becomes that much more inspirational when a creature of lesser descent looks to the heavens. And that creature, is SpaceBat.

It was a clear evening that Wednesday night in Florida. The flight team prepared themselves for the journey they were about to embark on. They had been training for months. Yet as the shuttle readied itself, NASA noticed an object attached to the external fuel tank. It was a bat. The photos of the creature were later analyzed by experts who said the bat likely had a bad wing, and possibly even a broken arm. When the rockets lit up, and the ship began to rumble, it was expected that the bat would fly away. Instead it held on tighter, and turned to face the skies above. The countdown reached 1 and lift off began. Again, NASA believed the bat would likely release it's grip and fly to safety. But the stubborn bat proved them wrong, and it made the life changing decision that despite a broken wing, despite a useless arm, and despite the fact that it may very well die once ascending to the upper atmosphere, it would fly again. And fly it did. Like a story right out of a Disney movie, the tale of SpaceBat tugs at the heart strings. We can all sympathize with the daring bat who decided that nothing would stop him from living. For even in death, SpaceBat lives. Likely flying around in the dark echo-locating moths to dine upon. Space moths.


We can only hope a new constellation will grace the night sky. It would be somewhat of a bat sign. But, much cooler than the Batman bat signal. Because this one will be calling memories of the bat that actually flew, unlike lame ass Batman who just runs around in a tight suit while not ever flying. The issue is that, as Greek mythology tells us, the constellations were formed when long since dead Hercules threw the objects into space, as can be seen here:

But fret not little one. We will never forget you. Let us bow our heads for a moment of silence. And then rest our sight on the memorial videos made in behalf of the Tadarida brasiliensis cosmonaut.







RIP SpaceBat. You are a hero, and inspiration to all of us. Now lets go buy some merch!

3 comments:

Erin said...

I will be graduating this spring with a degree in Environmental Conservation. Years of devoted study, and the only thing I've really learned is this:

Techs touch stuff so biologists don't have to.

Pardon me while I send my resume to NASA.

Erin said...

JK!

(Didn't mean to be offensive)

Archidoucheis said...

lol no worries Erin. There's no one here to offend. Funny thing is there's a group in Florida that is pushing legal action against NASA because it did not even make an attempt to remove the bat.