My Role in the Conquest of Space
Yesterday came the splendid news that a small software company, 3SL in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, has beaten off competition from the likes of IBM and Siemens to produce the software for what will eventually become the first manned mission to Mars.
"Furness" means "far peninsula" and indeed Barrow is a small industrial town in the West that is not so much in the back of beyond, but thirty miles or so beyond it, with its own strange accent that's a mixture of flat Lancashire and lilting North East with a tinge of Scottish.
It looks a bit like Liverpool, as they were both designed by the same man. When I first visited Liverpool, I thought wow, there's a coincidence, it looks like Barrow. Once known as a great shipbuilding town and producer of mighty liners, Barrow has of recent years produced the much less pleasurable nuclear submarines.
Some of my very favourite relatives come from Barrow, including my mother. But it is so far away from everywhere else that, when the owner of 3SL said they only had forty engineers, I was astonished that there were any software engineers at all in Barrow. I think of it as a town of beautiful beaches and hundreds of men riding bikes home from the shipyard. That's how it was when I was growing up, anyway.
In Barrow people have evolved separately, like kangaroos, and everyone's related to everyone else, and some of these software engineers are bound to be related to me, hence the modest title of this post.
I think that NASA are being short-sighted though. Having got Barrow to do the software, I think it's only fair that Barrow should build the rocket too: they have all necessary skills and equipment.
Because Barrow built some beautiful passsenger liners. And I think, for a manned trip to Mars, the current rockets look a bit - well - functional. They could be greatly improved by a couple of swimming pools, a sweeping banister rail, some traditional oak panelling and a nicely carved knocker on the front door. And Barrow's just the place to do it.
"Furness" means "far peninsula" and indeed Barrow is a small industrial town in the West that is not so much in the back of beyond, but thirty miles or so beyond it, with its own strange accent that's a mixture of flat Lancashire and lilting North East with a tinge of Scottish.
It looks a bit like Liverpool, as they were both designed by the same man. When I first visited Liverpool, I thought wow, there's a coincidence, it looks like Barrow. Once known as a great shipbuilding town and producer of mighty liners, Barrow has of recent years produced the much less pleasurable nuclear submarines.
Some of my very favourite relatives come from Barrow, including my mother. But it is so far away from everywhere else that, when the owner of 3SL said they only had forty engineers, I was astonished that there were any software engineers at all in Barrow. I think of it as a town of beautiful beaches and hundreds of men riding bikes home from the shipyard. That's how it was when I was growing up, anyway.
In Barrow people have evolved separately, like kangaroos, and everyone's related to everyone else, and some of these software engineers are bound to be related to me, hence the modest title of this post.
I think that NASA are being short-sighted though. Having got Barrow to do the software, I think it's only fair that Barrow should build the rocket too: they have all necessary skills and equipment.
Because Barrow built some beautiful passsenger liners. And I think, for a manned trip to Mars, the current rockets look a bit - well - functional. They could be greatly improved by a couple of swimming pools, a sweeping banister rail, some traditional oak panelling and a nicely carved knocker on the front door. And Barrow's just the place to do it.
posted by Daphne at 9:33 pm
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