Compromise

Compromise. What a dirty word. It's like saying, "let's take my ideals and your ideals, combine them, boil them down to a sticky paste, and bake them into a solid mass that mollifies both and satisfies neither."

Lovely.

But, I'm here to tell you that compromise can save lives. And seriously--what's more noble than that?

You've all met the adventurer in your life. The man who wants to climb K2 and the woman who wants to swim the English channel. These adventurers are so bold, so cunning, that nothing can dissuade them. You name it, it's been tried. Fatality charts (there are two deaths for each attempt. :nods:). Raw facts (you'll have to ingest 500 pounds of raw meat to reach the summit). Pleading (Widowed at 23? What will the in-laws say?). Et. cetera., et. cetera.

Herein lies the opportunity to save your beloved friend or significant other. Compromise.

Face it, you're going to have to show an effort. Fatality charts, raw facts, and pleading are all well and good, but they're just words. Words without action. If you're going to hold off the Grim Reaper, sometimes you have to meet him half-way.

Case study. You're in the midst of wedding planning, when--out of the blue--your bride- or husband-to-be drops the anvil. "Honey, let's get married on the moon!"

(you laugh, but I warn you, if the commercial space industry continues at its present rate, you'd better be prepared for this one.)

You might play the fatality card (Apollo 13? Challenger? Hellooo???), the raw facts (You'll lose 10% of your bone mass. No, it doesn't matter if we bring whole fat milk along.), or even the pleading card (But. but. HOW can we possibly afford this after buying those rings made out of impossible-to-findium?).

These attempts, while valiant, are doomed to fail. Your honey has clearly already weighed the disadvantages and found them wanting.

Herein lies your only hope. Compromise. Unfortunately, there's a lot of grey area between terra firma and the lunar surface, but, on the other hand, you've got 239,000 miles of bargaining room to work with (more if you time it right).

Now, granted, you're going to have to assume some risk. Some people might consider Low Earth Orbit to be an acceptable compromise, while others might go so far as to shoot for Geosynchronous orbit (or perhaps even a sling-shot trajectory around the far-side of the moon--hey, the lunar module pilots were cool too!).

If you hold particularly strong sway over him or her, you might even be able to talk them down into the Earth's atmosphere. A wedding on the Vomit Comet isn't ideal, but you at least get the illusion of zero gravity--though completing the ceremony in 25 seconds might require a justice with a particularly dextrous tongue.

How close you get to earth really depends on you. No pressure. Wait… space is a vacuum… better make that lots of pressure…

Compromise. It saves lives. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Until next time,

- Daniel

(Credit to Melanie H. for triggering the mental synapse that led to this post.)