Space is there, and we're going to climb it
- Jack
- Jan 11
- 10 min read
Paulie: Happy new year hotties! We’re back and so is Jack’s column, When You’re Strange. It was an absolute pleasure editing this one and seeing Jack reach into his past through the lens of science fiction. Watching this piece take shape over the last month and get stronger and stronger has been a complete privilege, and I’m happy to bring in 2026 with such a banger.
Without further ado, enjoy.
Many years ago, Great British explorer George Mallory
Who was to die on Mount Everest
Was asked "why did he want to climb it?"
He said, "Because it is there"
Well, space is there and we're going to climb it
John Fitzgerald Kennedy - Rice University 1962
Space, as Anthony Kiedis once didn’t quite say; it may be the final frontier but it's made in an East Midlands boxroom. In part the reason for writing about Space now is the 1903 piece from the New York Times which resurfaced a couple of years ago, which stated it would take between one and ten million years to create a flying machine that would actually function. This bold prediction was hilariously released nine weeks before the Wright Brothers’ manned flight. This column will not make the same mistake friends. You’ll not catch me napping when the time comes to head down to the local space port and wave a white hanky at the rockets as they take off. The other thing, if there is another thing here, is that there is a particularly romantic take on the law of conservation of mass, or 3000 year old Jain philosophy if that’s more your speed, which extrapolates that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. If that is true, and of course everything is true until it isn’t with both science and philosophy, then we are made of those very same frisky quarks and electrons which started the Big Bang. If we take that to be true, then the same chemical and physical reactions that drive human consciousness are derived directly from the Universe. I am by no means the first person to suggest that what we call the human psyche is actually the Universe experiencing itself objectively, and it’s entirely possible that I am the dumbest, but the idea comforts and terrifies me in almost equal measure. Think of the stupidest thing you did today, I’ll give you a minute. It’s bad enough if that’s just you being you without wrestling with the idea that actually, that was the Universe’s conscience brushing your teeth with nappy cream.
So, as well as occasionally worrying about the great beyond’s relationship with me, (like is watching Arrested Development again really the best use of the cosmic ego?) I am also given cause, occasionally, to consider my relationship with it. You know, the big It. All of it.
