the great game

A little while back I learned was getting pulled to deploy to central Asia.

Milestone?  or the in-between?

My career has been running in reverse as far as I can tell... When I was in college I researched theoretical radiation shielding concepts for the long-term planning of human missions to Mars (and progression beyond a Type-0 civilization). I was able to work with the biology department for the majority of the research... a nice change of environment.  I was fortunate to get to attend more school after that, where I worked on the evolution of powered propulsion on our own planet. It was an honor to work with some amazing people to design some of the critical components inside advanced engines.

After the military finally decided to stop paying me to be a student, I started working in a laboratory, and my life and my projects slowly transitioned closer and closer to the users of technology... for my organization: the warfighters.  We played with cool concepts... like building soldiers little airplanes that fly like birds.  We made improvements to their rucksacks to make their loads lighter... and I worked with heroes every day.  While I was enjoying that, my shop was also co-managing a "small" weapons project at the time which ended up becoming huge for the folks who fly the big airplanes... and before I realized it, the stuff I was working on didn't have a future 20, 30... 100 years down the road... it was getting fielded tomorrow.

And if the immediacy of these projects--the high tempo required to keep up with the changing battlefield--diluted my sense of the gravity of weapons research, there was also the "other" office I hung out in.  There, working with some interesting organizations, my curiosity for the physics of the impossible remained satiated.  But it was down there at the other end of the stale hallway--where I escaped from my traditional fast-paced research by craning my neck back to the future--that I realized technology has a price... a pendulum that is slowly coming back.

Moving on in reverse, after my time in the lab I went out west to work directly on systems that are in operation as we speak... and here I see the wonders of technology as it impacts our military today. Nothing short of fascinating.

And in a final step backward... I'm going to spend some time with the Army to--maybe--see what we're doing up close.

I am so thankful for the chances I've been given to witness the potential and creativity encompassed by the human mind crafted into reality, fueled by our passion.  I'm thankful for a personal interpretation of a higher order that those experiences have emboldened.  For the yearning to be closer to humanity and energize my convictions.  I'm thankful for my family, my friends, and the countless people I am in love with.  For the chance to be happy, to love, to care, and to just smile.

Over there, out in the thickness of life... feeling the world as it hits you in the face.  When you disappear into those stale hallways you miss all that... and now thrust out to see it all I feel as if the only life I've lived is artificial.  I can only hope to see this opportunity past my own kiln glazed eyes and breathe in the dust of giants.

We are advancing as a civilization... but not as a planet.  Whether you cut the cake from a political, military, social, or economic perspective, we are moving sideways as much as we are forward.  For every one of us working to "advance" society there are ten others who just want to farm their land, herd their livestock, love their families, take care of their tribe, and be left alone.  And a hundred, living in poverty, who just want to eat.  Who are we living for?

As I head to this place containing some of the deepest and richest history of the species in recent time...  As my own pendulum rages down, down, down...

You can make a plan, Carve it into stone

Like a feather falling, It is still unknown

Until the clock speaks up, Says it's time to go

You could choose the high, Or the lower road

You might clench your fist, You might fork your tongue

As you curse or praise, All the things you've done

And the faders move, And the music dies

As we pass over, On the arc of time