Inside Blockhouse 26

Stephen Pinker, a Harvard professor and author of several popular science books (The Blank Slate being perhaps the best known) last year wrote a short but potent article discussing the ongoing clashes between science and popular culture, religion, and the humanities. Pinker offers a coherent, insightful and penetrating look at these conflicts. For those of you interested in the real sciences, this is well worth five minutes of your day.

Sad to say, the conflicts haven't diminished much since the article appeared. If anything, the anti-science movement in the USA has grown stronger. Far too many people seem to vote based on what they feel in their gut (a nasty place, full of bile, partially digested food, and waste products), rather than reasoned decisions, reached after careful deliberation in the organ where decisions should be made, the brain.

But speaking of real science, I've always believed that one of the more important functions of science fiction is to serve as an inspiration to actual working scientists; science fiction can look ahead, provide glimpses of what could be, not just what is. One of the better examples of this can be seen by anyone who tours the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. On the walls inside Blockhouse 26, which controlled the launch of the first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, you will see several plaques with quotes from famous science fiction writers. One, I recall, was from the works of Jules Verne; the others fade from memory.

If you're able to arrange such a tour (and the Air Force used to do them every weekend; best check now to see if they're still available), let me inform you that the pretty blinking status lights on the consoles have been restored for your viewing pleasure; we escorts turned them on and off as we entered and left the control room. If you can't make it, there's a quite decent YouTube video immediately available, though it shows only the control center, and not the exterior rooms in the blockhouse where the plaques hang.

Photo credit: LC-26_equipment by Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), (Jud McCranie) is licensed under CC 3.0 / Resized from original