Space. It’s been called the final frontier. For a really long time now. Before bell bottoms even. Sure, there’s been space stations and bunch of satellites. But humans getting in space ships and going places? That’s taking a while.[1]  

But it’s never too early to start asking the really important questions about space travel. And that’s why in Part 1 of The Diveby’s 2 part series “Let’s Talk About Space”[2], The Diveby examines the prospects for man’s best friend: Dog.[3]

I recently read an article entitled “Does This Relationship Have a Future” by Nick Barbaro of the Austin Chronicle. It’s a good read—informative, compelling, and very sad.  Barbaro says “If Dogs aren’t welcome on the starship,” he’d rather hang back on Earth. And I agree. And to be clear, Barbaro thinks there’s no way dogs will be welcome.  

Fortunately, he’s wrong. Dogs-in-space is an engineering problem. Currently spaceship materials are more expensive than Pentagon hammers.  We know oxygen in space will be limited and it’s assumed that the living space will be more cramped than a Manhattan mime’s uptown apartment. But that’s where the rich people come in.

Billionaires aren’t ready to go to space yet because they’ve got it pretty good on Earth. Also, space tourism hasn’t turned into universal baller shit…yet. It may be 50 years from now, or 500 years from now, but both these things are going to change. Once the .01% gets more interested in space, they’ll  become consumed with investing in making spaceships as un-frontierlike as possible. And the first creature comfort they’re gonna demand is gravity.

When we think of space travel on the most popular movies and TV—your Star Wars, your Star Trek, your Space Balls—everybody just walks around the ships the same as they would on Earth. In real life, this has yet to be achieved. We need to get to the gravity-on-the-ship level before we can really figure out stuff like whether we can bring the dogs and where the foosball table is gonna go.  

To be clear, in space there’s no such thing as actual gravity. What we do have is an untested theory on how to generate artificial gravity. You may have noticed it in more recent space movies like The Martian and Passengers.[4]   

The cinematic pseudo-gravity theory is this: your ship needs to have at least one spinning ring section. And that section will have a centripetal force so great that it will keep anything in it—you, the weight bench, the beer fridge—glued to the floor. But the science indicates that for the force to be strong enough, the spinning ring section will have to be fairly massive. And guess, what? Once you have a massive spinning ring section, voila! You’ve got a lot more space on your craft than some performance artist’s vertical coffin home.  

Rich people ain’t staying on the Earth if Earth is dying. And rich people ain’t heading off into the cosmos looking for habitable worlds on ships with no gravity. But once you have the big-ass spinning ring section of your luxury cruise liner, your dogs, your cats, your service peacocks can all be on the fantastic voyage.

Still not convinced? Think of how much rich people love their animals. Some of them leave them millions of dollars in their will.  You think they’re going to go all the way into space without their chihuahuas if they can’t even leave them at home to go purse shopping at Nordstrom’s? No freaking way.  Those poodles are going to be pissing on the space ship floor just like they do at the department store. 

It’s not like dogs haven’t been to space before. The Russians recruited strays for early missions. And while some dogs like Laika did not have a great time (she died a horrible death in space). , Strelka and Belta  were better trained and made it back to Earth. Strelka even had puppies, one of which was given by Kruschev to the Kennedy’s.[5]

Some may say that cats will adapt better to space. Because cats are less needy and that could come in handy if it’s all hands on deck while we fly through an asteroid belt. But it doesn’t really matter—they’re both going to go. To space, we must concede nothing. And why should we? Because once we have enough space on the ship for artificial gravity, bet on daddy’s little girl getting her pony too. Just give me dibs on a crash couch way the hell away from the stable.

Next time on “Let’s Talk About Space”: Breaking down the alcohol and marijuana situation up there. There are issues to address.

[1] Yeah, I know Elon Musk says Space X will be leading a voyage to Mars soon, but Elon Musk says a lot of shit. He says he’s a socialist but then gives money to the GOP. He’s also pretty sure humans are living in a Matrix.   

[2] Baby. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.

[3] The animal, not the Bounty Hunter.

[4] Ok, probably not Passengers. Anybody else see it? It wasn’t that bad. Was it? I didn’t think it was bad.

[5] Pushnika played with Caroline and the kids in the White House, gaining their trust and ruthlessly exploiting it in setting up the most successful Russian spy operation of all time. One of her great, great grandpuppies was recently named in the Mueller indictment. Shhh. Don’t tell Trey Gowdy.