How are YOU celebrating World Space Week?

According to the United Nations, World Space Week runs this year, and every year, from October 4-10.

Why? Because on October 4, 1957, the old Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1. Then, on October 10, 1967, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (sounds like something the UN might draft, doesn't it?) entered into force. (Yes, in case you're wondering, the United States has ratified this treaty.)

So... how are you celebrating this year?

For one of my favorite comic strips, Tim Rickard's Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, pretty much every week is Space Week. But this week Mr. Rickard is recycling a plot first served up in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and melding it with the sneering news coverage of billionaires venturing into space:

You may not immediately recall what happened to Ship B of the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet and its millions of telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, "tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, [and] management consultants" -- fully a third of the planet's population -- traveling in suspended animation. (They crash-landed on Earth two million years in the past, leaving the indigenous, evolving hominind population terminally depressed and bound for extinction.)

You likewise may not recall the sad fate of Golgafrincham. (Having conned all the useless members of their society off the planet with wildly varying stories about the planet being doomed -- my favorite was that an enormous mutant star goat was going to eat the planet -- the "other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.")

But even without catching the literary reference, most readers will probably smirk right along with the idea that billionaires should be banned from space or, if allowed to go at all, given one-way tickets only. Har har. And let's change the rules about who qualifies for official astronaut wings so that the person who bankrolled Blue Origin, Amazon's obscenely rich Jeff Bezos, can be denied his wings for putting his life at risk riding just past the internationally recognized boundary of outer space on his own rocket. Even though that meant that, once again, Wally Funk was denied official recognition.

In the first modern Age of Exploration, the analogs of the Bezoses and Bransons and Musks of today did not venture out in their wood and canvas ships in search of trade, gold, or glory. Oh, no, they limited their personal risk by staying home, directing affairs from London coffee houses and, in the course thereof, inventing the insurance business to limit their financial risks as well.

Who else -- besides governments -- could afford any sort of space exploration except for these flamboyant, egotistical billionaires? Hate on the uber-rich all you want, but governments have done a lousy job of space exploration because (surprise, surprise) they made it political: Richard Nixon couldn't wait to cancel the Apollo Program at the first possible opportunity precisely because it was perceived as the signature achievement of the Kennedy Administration. And the pattern hasn't changed any time the White House has changed hands: The new administration will announce its own grand plan -- and cancel those wasteful plans promulgated by its predecessor. It's a wonder the Space Shuttle ever launched or the International Space Station ever got built. But, by now, it must be no suprise to even the dullest among us that next year will mark the 50th anniversary of humankind's last trip to the Moon.

Compare that, if you will, to the development of aviation in the 50 years following Kitty Hawk. Governments contributed substantially to the development of aviation in that first half-century (see, World War I and World War II) but governments did not completely control it. As the governmental death-grip on spaceflight has lessened in recent years, even only slightly, the pace of development has finally quickened. And is becoming ever more rapid.

Which brings us back again to Wally Funk. This summer Funk became the oldest person ever to fly in space (at 82, she was five years older than was John Glenn, when he made his second trip to Earth orbit, in 1998, aboard the space shuttle Discovery).

If all goes as planned, Wally Funk's record will fall this coming Tuesday, October 12, when William Shatner, 90, better known as James Tiberius Kirk, will boldly go to space in a sub-orbital flight aboard another Blue Origin capsule.

Which leads to the funniest take I have seen about Shatner's upcoming flight. This is from an often funny, if sometimes juvenile, Facebook site called Captain Kirk, The Man, the Myth, the Legend:

OK... so I'm a nerd. But, if you got this far, maybe you are, too. In which case, live long and prosper, and enjoy the rest of World Space Week.