Earth and Its Simple Solutions

When something breaks around your home, what the worst that can happen? You have to go out to the shop and get a new light bulb, maybe. You call in a locksmith and he gets the key out from where it’s been jammed. You need new carpet after the dishwasher flooded.

Ha! On the space station, every single little breakage could mean life or death. If the door fails to close, that means you lose your air. Water purifier broken down? Well, you need to use your instincts and ingenuity to rig up a solution before you die of thirst. See what I mean? Space problems are just so much more important than regular, boring Terra Firma problems. Nothing down here presents much of a challenge. True, I can’t operate every machine ever made, but even then I just call some guy, he arrives with the luxury of aluminium toolbox central locking, pulls something fancy out of said toolbox and that’s it fixed. Or if you’ve done something truly terrible, I suppose you could always just dump it by the side of the road and get a new one. Ha! Imagine, having the luxury of that sort of thing! There are no shops in space, obviously. Currency is worthless, which I happen to think is a purer, simpler and superior way of doing things.

Not that I’m begrudging anyone their aluminium toolboxes or…I don’t know, utes. They drive those a lot, those tradespeople. No, they’re just doing their best to help people cope with the system. But I’ve been up there, where the air is clearer (and non-existent, but…somehow clearer) and the people to blame are the ones who made everything so convenient in the first place. Convenience has given way to inconvenience. And the price is these people having to drive around with under tray draws and such, fixing all our problems.

-Apollo