Space is really big

Yesterday I passed 11,000 miles on my bicycle since I began keeping track in September of 2002.

I awoke this morning to the news that science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at his home in Sri Lanka.

These two events are related.

That isn't to say I killed Clarke with my bike or anything like that, but his death this morning got me to thinking about the things I am trying to say in this blog entry. Clarke, of course, is the author of 2001: a Space Odyssey, the Rama series, and many other science fiction novels. Many of you may know that I am a huge space junkie. In my spare time and in my wasted time I like to visit space-related sites such as this one, or check up on the mars rovers here, or see cool space pics here. I am fascinated by space and the possibility of space travel--not in the Star Trek or Star Wars hyperspace sort of way--but in real, pragmatic ways of getting off this rock. I really hope that I live to see astronauts set foot on Mars. This was they kind of stories Arthur C. Clarke told. So I was sad when I heard about Clarke's death. I know he was 90 years old, so his demise is hardly unexpected, but I will miss his style. His books seldom featured complex or compelling characters, but the ideas were fantastic.

One of the things that interests me about space is that it is so big. I have another (dead) sci-fi author to thank for teaching me this: Douglas Adams. He once wrote in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. " The profoundness of this statement is obscured even as it is emphasized by the humorous tone in which it is presented. Back to the bike.



I love my bike. It looks like this:



and I have had it since the spring of 2004. When I passed 11,000 miles yesterday, I was rather proud of myself. I know that real bikers travel much much further each year, but I have been averaging about 2000 miles each year commuting to and from the university. My son, always the one to keep my head from getting too big, said with a great deal of enthusiasm, "Dad, I can't wait till you hit a million miles."

Now I have to point out that my 11000 miles puts me nearly half way around the world from where I am now (somewhere in the outback of Australia, I believe), but because space is so incredibly big, I might as well be in my own back yard. So, at my average of 2000 miles a year, it will take me 50 more years to reach 100,000 miles, which is the point at which my bicycle odometer turns over. My wife thinks this is a reasonable goal. To reach my son's goal of 1,000,000 miles, I will have to ride 2000 miles a year for the next 500 years. Now, at its closest, Mars is approximately 34 million miles away. Which means that to get to Mars, our closest neighbor (not counting the moon, which is gravitationally tied to us), it will take me another 17,000 years--at the rate I am currently riding. This assumes that Mars will again be at its closest approach with us at that time.

Just to put things into perspective.