Very special day today: 50 years since the first human being orbited the earth. On 12th April 1961, Yuri Gagarin was launched by a Vostok rocket into space, and completed an orbit of the earth. He became an international celebrity and travelled the world to talk about his trip and promote the Soviet Union.

50 years on, I wonder what his legacy is? It took only 8 years – read that again, 8 years – to move from this very rudimentary flight to successfully landing men on the moon – perhaps the single most complex and awe-inspiring engineering feat humanity has achieved. It cost $24bn – the largest expenditure ever in peace time – and at its peak employed over 400,000 people.

The Apollo missions lasted just 3 years. Since then, no human has ever left the earth’s orbit. Nobody has done anything except what Gagarin basically did, which was to fly very high.

So what is the legacy of all the money and time and technology? The non-stick frying pan? A GPS system? A nice space telescope? Is that pretty much it?

My hope is that the legacy of Gagarin’s incredible flight will be this: it marked the birth of planet Earth. What he was able to see for the first time, and what all astronauts since have commented on, is Earth in its context: a precious, life-rich place in the midst of a very very empty universe.

Living on the surface of Earth it’s impossible to get this perspective. But what missions into space have given us are a sense of unity. Despite all our differences, we do inhabit the same place. We all call it home. And we should take care of it.

Though Gagarin was able to see more of earth than any human previously, it was only in the Apollo missions that the very first ‘full earth’ shot could be taken. Seeing our planet from that far away was a deeply profound experience for those on board, even more so for the twelve who saw Earth ‘rise’ as they walked on the moon.

In a way then, what we celebrate when we remember Gagarin’s trip is the birth of Earth as a unified object, and thus the birth of a ‘green’ consciousness. And for that reason our celebrations ought to take the form of looking after it as best we can.

Amazon now allow anyone to publish to their store using ‘Kindle Direct Publishing‘ so I’ve uploaded a short story called ‘Into Great Science’ which I wrote last year.

“Fumbling, floating, he found the hammer, and headed for the window…”

In lean times NASA has gone into partnership with the Catholic Church, launching a ‘Voyager’-style probe which will be the first manned mission out of our Solar System. For the monk returning to his former career as an astronaut, the mission will be the ultimate hermitage: he will be in total isolation for the rest of his life.

But that may not be long. A violent solar storm has sent a powerful wave of radiation through space, shutting down Mission Control and preventing them from warning him of the coming danger.

In this tense and tight short story, theologian and technology-writer Kester Brewin explores issues of faith, doubt, abandonment and trust, all based on real data of the projected effects of a ‘mass coronal ejection’ similar to the ‘Carrington Event’ of 1859, which left machinery spontaneously combusting and telegraph operators thrown across the room.

You can get the UK version here for £1.41, and the US version here for $2.

Do I think this will replace traditional publishers? No. But what I think it will do is push traditional publishing back to its roots a little. In other words, they will publish less, but it will be far better. With the material I have written I would without doubt have published it too quickly if I was simply uploading to Amazon. Working with a publisher, working with good editors and readers pushes writers to greater height and depth. And this will be what traditional publishing will continue to offer that KDP simply can’t: quality editing.

That said, it looks like a great place to get writing out there and raise some profile. Hope you enjoy the story if you’ve not already read it.

Very interesting report today in the Telegraph that NASA have detected a large solar flare erupting from the sun – which is likely to cause some spectacular displays of the northern and southern lights.

These ‘coronal mass injections’ are actually a source of immense worry for disaster planners, as the largest eruption could result in every electrical device on earth having to be switched off to protect it from destruction. This has happened before: the ‘Carrington Event’ of 1859, in which the few electrical machines of the time burst into flames, and telegraph operators were sent flying across the room.

Hearing about this on the BBC science programme Material World inspired me to write a short story, which I’ve uploaded here for the first time. For those of you who enjoy short-form fiction, hope you enjoy it. The story concerns an astronaut turned monk, who is called out of his hermitage by a forward thinking Pope hoping to reinvigorate support for Catholicism and help a cash-strapped NASA by putting a man on a Voyager-style probe on a journey out of the solar system. As the solar storm hits, those in mission control know that the astronaut will not survive, but as he struggles with loneliness and dwindling faith, they wonder if it would even have been right to tell him of his fate…

Download and read the PDF here: Into Great Science Aug 10 And do it quick before your devices get fried

(Update thanks for all those who downloaded this and read it free. As an experiment I’ve removed the PDF link and have now published this on Kindle. UK link here, US link here.)

Occasionally two things from the news catch your ear and resonate together. Today it was the news that Obama has cancelled Nasa’s new moon programme. And [ht Barry Taylor] that Gil Scott-Heron is back with a new album.

The connection? I’ve always loved Scott-Heron’s early, hard-hitting social commentaries. And the lyrics of ‘Whitey on the Moon’ just seem so appropriate in these tough economic times – especially post Haiti’s earthquake – that I wondered if Obama had been listening when he made his decision:

I can’t pay no doctor bills
But Whitey’s on the moon
Ten years from now I’ll be paying still
While whitey’s on the moon

You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey’s on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey’s on the moon…

The racial context of 1974 America, into which the album The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was clearly different to that of 2010. But ‘whitey’ still exists in other guises: the greedy bankers, the tight landlords, the traffickers and corrupt politicians – all of those who would divert money away from just causes to fulfil their own agendas.

Actually, I think the original Apollo missions turned out to be good value, but I can’t see that these would be. So it’s a good decision by Obama. Let’s just hope the money that is saved goes into welfare programmes, not weapons.