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| Inspired by someone extraordinary. |
Even the most gifted teachers struggle at times to hold their students’ interest. One can hardly blame the students, who often fail to see the connection between the classes society forces them to take and the jobs available to them after graduation. What if children grew up on the frontiers of space, where the dangers of everyday life were coupled with discoveries just waiting to be made? In his novel Jupiter Project, Dr. Gregory Benford presents us with a young man who clearly sees a connection between his studies and his desired career, one who will never simply settle for less than he is capable of achieving.
In addition to taking Calculus and other courses in space station JABOL’s Education Center, Matt Bowles has an Electronics class in Mr. Jablon’s lab. There he learns to make new circuits and simple devices. When he designs an improved version of the Faraday Cups for JABOL’s orbital satellites, his instructor helps him build it. Such practical “study” is coupled with work experience in Monitoring. For several hours each day, he not only monitors all nearby satellites to make sure they are functioning normally, but looks for asteroids, rocks, or anything else orbiting Jupiter that could put a hole in the space station or destroy one of its satellites. While he enjoys this work, he yearns to explore his interests further, such as by maneuvering the shuttles, skimmers, and one-man jetters that service JABOL. What more could the station do to spur on Matt’s ambitions, you wonder? How about requiring all teens to take a periodic vacation on Ganymede?
As the ion cruiser Sagan is parked in the Can’s hollow interior, Matt suits up, leaves through an airlock, and utilizing a safety line, space-walks to the ship. Once he arrives on Ganymede, he is assigned a bunk in the dormitory, and then heads for the life dome, where he can take off his suit and just have fun. When he’s not performing amazing turns and maneuvers on the small ski slope (in that moon’s 1/3 G), Matt can explore the narrow valleys and foggy marshes, tour the experimental farm, or play soccer and other games with his friends. But Matt’s interests are too great for him to spend his entire vacation at play, and his schooling and work experience qualify him for any number of jobs. He opts to spend the remainder of his vacation not in the dome, but working in remote areas of the moon.
The next day, Matt suits up and goes out to where the walkers are parked. His walker, nicknamed Perambulatin’ Puss or just Cat, stands six meters tall, on six legs. Living and working quarters are in the bubble on top. Matt climbs up the entrance ladder through a jumble of hydraulic valves and rocker arms, then sets the vehicle in motion. Setting an easy pace of forty kilometers-per-hour, he heads out across the moon’s surface. For the next five days, he will stop at remote sensors to perform maintenance and take samples. Ganymede is constantly changing: the big fusion plants are throwing out enormous amounts of heat and gas. This transforms the ice fields into churning ammonia rivers. Recorders and pocket laboratories have been placed all over Ganymede to monitor the air and temperature changes occurring far away from the big reactors. Matt’s journey allows him to experience this changing landscape first hand.
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| Yearning to become someone extraordinary. |
Perhaps not every child growing up on JABOL would accomplish feats worthy of the history books. But with Jupiter just outside a window, with space just outside the front door, with a moon being terraformed just a short flight away, how many of the next generation would be content to live out their lives just getting by? How many more might be inspired to become truly extraordinary?
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