Dead Astronauts

The word "Astronaut" won't really mean anything for very much longer. In a world where people can take a commercial flight into space or even an elevator ride to an orbital station, what does an astronaut become? The etymology of the word means "Star Sailor." Is then an astronaut someone who travels to or through outer space professionally? Surely we will come up with a better words for it than that. The word "astronaut" will no longer be useful. It will die.

Dead words are very sad things. There are surely Latin words that haven't been spoken aloud for many many years. Imagine they had a specific word for...I dunno...the person who comes to the public baths intoxicated.. This word is now dead. In fact, it's dead twice-over. It dies first when public baths were no longer available or fashionable, so a word for a drunkard there would be useless. It dies again with the Latin language. Granted, Latin isn't precisely dead, but this particular word has no place in our world, and how would we translate it?

This will happen to the astronauts. The first courageous souls to step beyond our own world won't have a title in the distant future, because they will have many words for those who travel in space, and our primitive word for the beginning of that era just won't fit. It's sad, not just because the word will die, but the romance associated with it.

Yes, romance. There's something romantic about being isolated out in the unknown with little chance for survival or return. That's what makes David Bowie's "Space Oddity" so touching. This romance bleeds from the situation and permeates other things associated with astronauts, like the ridiculous suits and helmets. They're like cowboys. Cowboy hats became romantic symbols because they were associated with the figures who wore them. That domed reflective visor that astronauts wear is the same way, it's associated with the space pioneers who wore them. You can see out at everything around you, but nothing can see in, adding another layer to the isolation of space.

Here's a poem about space:

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I Saw Your Ship

I saw your ship

heading so far away;

your beautifully crafted bones

protecting a beautifully crafted heart

among Orion's remains.

Why so far away?

Are the stars here so boring,

so lacking in their lustre,

that you must seek new horizons?

I know how you feel.

The same thing brought me here,

so long ago.

Olympus Mons is long-since stale

and none care for Ceres since Chisme came,

crashed

and made craters of her caves.

I thought things would be better here,

in the innards of so great a hunter,

but you can't see the colors

for all the dust in the air.

So cold since Betelgeuse burned out.

I'm going to sleep now,

until the stars look foreign again.

I'll dream of you, in your

sleek stellar schooner;

so splendorous I'm unworthy.

Hope my last power cell lasts the trip.

Perhaps we'll meet again

  once you've found the

    light you're looking for

             out there

                 in all this

                               Black.

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Here's another one about space, and cowboys too:

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Shoulda been a Space Cowboy

I should have been a cowboy

But that frontier is gone

The only unknown places left

Lie beyond the light of our sun

Now I can be a space cowboy

With the solar wind dancing in my hair

Letting the stars sing me to sleep

And find my peace out there

I look at my own reflection

It's not all I want to be

There's as many stars as there are people

So there's somewhere out there for me

I'll find some far-off pulsar

Live 'neath its radioactive dome

And if I point my satellites just right

I can hear the music back home

When the time comes for me

To lay down and die

I'll float into a supernova

And my dust will be a star, by and by

Don't take the blame upon yourself

I know you tried to make me stay

There's so little left here for me

The world's a pound and I'm a stray

If you love me like you say you do

Tell all the world that you won't miss them

Take my hand in the deep-space prairie

And be my binary system

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There you have it, post number seven. (approach with trepidation)