This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition, I listened to a segment on bargain space ship launching. Yes, that’s more or less the gist. In light of the grounding of space shuttle Atlantis, it’s been realized that the costs of expansion into space are too exorbitant and we need to spend less. To the rescue comes Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX, his company dedicated to making space travel more affordable. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, an elder at agenting such stellar tourism expressed amusement and concern over such a cheap possibility.

Ah, capitalism. We now have Wal-mart space travel, and Sach’s is actually worried.

I listened to the segment with both excitement asnd caution, because I realized I was hearing the future. Eventually someone’s going to master this possibility and mass produce it for consumption. My next thought was, we’re encroaching on realizing the fantastical of my literary youth. Things that were so far out of limits, beyond what we could imagine are happening. They aren’t just happening, they’re normalizing. It made me wonder: WWAD? What would Asmiov do? What would he do if he had the opportunity to venture into the questions his brain teased into convincing scifi and fantasy? Fiction writers, of all the mad things you imagined and wrote about, how would you react if they started to manifest?

I thought about that a bit. I’m pretty sure I’d be ecstatic. The magick, the shapeshifters, the acceptance of other relationship dynamics, the higher awareness, the perpetually satisfying

What better comeuppance? We’ve been getting paid not only for writing, but for predicting the future! Aren’t all those bestseller list naysayers and form letter editors going to feel stupid?

As for budget colonizing of outer space, I’m in. I just hope the Wal-mart space robots take Visa.