3/1/24
Newsletter #564
The Crack of Dawn
My good buddy Bruce Campbell sent me this:
BRUCE CAMPBELL
Wed, Feb 21, 5:03 PM
Gulp!!
Nearly 30,000 objects are hurtling through near-Earth orbit. That’s not just a problem for space.
By: By Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent
Description: (CNN) — Once upon a time, gazing at the night sky was an escape from manmade messiness on Earth.
(Sent from NewsWatch 12 - KDRV)
Link to this article:
https://www.kdrv.com/news/national/nearly-30-000-objects-are-hurtling-through-near-earth-orbit-that-s-not-just-a/article_c3525aca-1f62-5d39-8cb3-fb06966d7946.html
The reason that Bruce sent me this link is that when I was living in a single-wide trailer up the road from him, in 2002-2003, I wrote a screenplay called The Cascade Effect about this very subject. What if two satellites collide and explode, then the debris, which would be orbiting Earth at 23,000 miles per hour, just like bullets, hits all of the other satellites and blows them up, too? This event is called the Cascade Effect. Eventually, there would be so much junk whizzing around the planet that it would prevent space travel. Any spaceship that entered the field of space junk would immediately get blown up. In my story, set in the far distant future of 2054, just to complicate things, America has a moon base that’s now cut off from all supplies, including all of their water.
This is the treatment that I wrote first, https://beckerfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/the-cascade-effect-treatment.pdf April 17, 2003 previous to writing the screenplay. Part of my process for writing a screenplay is by starting out writing a 12–14-page treatment, which is, for all intents and purposes, a short story. But it’s an entire story.
In any case, I thought that this was a particularly cutting-edge idea that was sincerely threatening, and felt rather imminent, and that was back in 2003. Well, here we are, 21 years later and somebody else has finally noticed. Only now there are way more satellites than there were back then. In just the last five years Elon Musk, with his company, SpaceX, has personally launched 5,289 satellites. He is preparing to deploy 12,000 more in the very near future! Not only that, but Elon Musk also has a son named Techno Mechanicus.
So, is the Cascade Effect an imminent threat? I thought it was imminent 21 years ago, and it’s much more of threat now. Are we utterly oblivious to it? Of course we are.
Which obliquely brings me to the Meta-Crisis. Being old, my mind automatically wants to change “meta” to “mega.” When I was a kid, “mega” was the abused prefix. Mega-sale, mega-burger, Megatron, megalomaniac.
Meta is now used in many, many ways, and means different things, whereas “mega” just meant big. Minimally, meta can mean after, between, beyond or within. In an old- fashioned way, the meta in metamorphosis and metabolism means change. But meta also has a self-referential meaning. For instance, what I’m presently doing is meta-writing in that I am writing about writing. At its best, and this is really reaching back, is when Zeppo and a girl start to sing a song in Horse Feathers (1932). After a second, Groucho steps into the foreground and says something like, “If I were you, I’d go get more popcorn. Unfortunately, I’m stuck here,” then he steps out. Now we get the gal singing the song for some medication, who steps out of the production number revealing the camera and the crew. Don’t even get me started.
The Meta-Crisis isn’t coming, folks, it’s here. And it could just as easily be called the Mega-Crisis. Simply put, the Meta-Crisis is too many crises occurring at the same time; it’s crisis overload.
Because I’m subscribed to the New York Times I can also receive a variety of newsletters and addendums. I get one about the Middle East, one by John McWhorter about language, Maureen Dowd giving her occasionally funny perspective, and one about the climate. Yesterday’s climate report was about how the oceans are warming so much faster than was anticipated it’s ridiculous. The article was calmly headlined, “Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures, ‘It’s like an omen of the future.’” It goes on to say, “Last month was the hottest January on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then.”
Since I am the man in search of irony in a post-Ironic world, here’s how I see the Mega-Crisis (mega is better) starting off – and it already has. Indonesia, which is made up of 17,000 islands, is sinking. The capital, Jakarta, is sinking so fast that they’ve built a new capital city called Nusantara, which will be inaugurated on my birthday, August 17, 2024. Indonesia also happens to be the most-populous Muslim country in the world, with 300 million people.
Here in the U.S., we have our panties in a twist about the migrants along our southern border. Not all that long ago Europe went into a total panic when migrants showed up along the coast of the Mediterranean from many other countries. What happens when instead of thousands of migrants showing up, there are millions?
Have a really nice day.