The Space Child Has No Name

One of the problems to surely face the first child conceived in outer space will be her awful name. Her future parents (and they walk among us today, bank on it) are going to name her something unbelievably dumb... you know they will.

I don't and won't blame them for what they're going to do. It's not like any of us would perform any better if tasked with choosing a name that is already certain to be on history's lips for quite some time. They'll temporarily lose their minds and name her something ridiculous. We'll try not to laugh too hard when we hear it, and that will be that.

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I think humanity finds itself now in the very early days of the next Space Age--the real Space Age--the one based on commerce. Which, and don't let the foolish or mean tell you otherwise, is and has always been a good thing.

People will pay incredible sums of money for a fifteen-minute ride into outer space. Many thousands of them have already paid their deposit, and the seats aren't even upholstered yet. And like any service or commodity for which there is a demand, the cost is going to come down.

Richard Branson's ships will fly, and eventually to hotels. Weightless research laboratories will facilitate breakthroughs in nanotechnology as yet even undreamed. And the unlimited, renewable supply of energy that our sun is kind enough to spew will be collected by giant, orbiting arrays and efficiently distributed to every country on Earth. New opportunities will present themselves to untold millions of restless men and women of all nationalities and creeds--the likes of which haven't been seen since we first learned to float structures on water.

Will it solve every problem? No, of course not, and thank goodness for that. Life would become intolerably boring if there weren't any problems to solve. But what shall keep us away from the dark slopes of irreversible evil that have and always will, line humanity's path like freeway exits you didn't mean to take? Same as always of course--the dark slopes of irreversible evil will be avoided by average people sharing ideas and information, each making the countless tiny decisions that together drive a world. And this crazy internet thingy facilitates that as never before.

What if the nations of Ye Olde Europe had said: "Hey, we have problems here." (And there were problems--some very, very big problems.) "We should solve them first before spending all this money just to find out what's across the sea."
What if ancient tribes had said: "Shit, it looks awful chilly on that Bering Strait, and you know what else, I bet there's bears out there too."

Bollocks to that, right? It's a good thing cowards don't prevail.

Exploration, in its many forms, is a pure joy. Making a buck is a personal and familial necessity. Throughout history the two have combined to produce some magnificent results. I see no reason this won't continue.

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Which brings us back to the matter of the first child to be conceived in outer space. I don't know to which girl and boy I should be speaking, but whoever you are, you better not name your child something silly. She's gonna hate you for it if an eon's worth of history classes snicker every time they read her name.

I humbly recommend you name her after me: Latigo Flint. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Latigo Flint, Space Child.

I guess if you must, you can make 'Flint' the middle name and slap your surname on the end--unless your last name is Boyle, 'cause then the first child conceived in space would be named Latigo Flint Boyle--which would be way too close to Laura Flynn Boyle--and that would just be weird.




(From The High Frontier by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill (1927-1992)

"We need, I believe, to lift our eyes..... to remind ourselves of the shared vision for which our work is done. Ultimately that vision will expand our physical, political and mental boundaries from the confines of a single planet to the much broader limits of a race freely expanding its habitat throughout our solar system, and from there to the stars. Even the beginning of realization of that vision will bring profound benefits to our planet and its life.")