Today is Spaceship Day is a grueling story of a dystopian society that sacrifices some of it's young ones for scientific purposes each year in order to explore uncharted exoplanets. Why has this society stooped so low is unclear, but a clue is given in Yaxley’s narration about spaceship day, where he says:
“Ask yourself – what would life be like with the stars of heaven? No magic in front of our eyes.”
One could simply interpret the “stars of heaven” as real stars, but that leaves the “magic” that is in front of their eyes hard to interpret. That’s why I think that this society has cluttered their planet’s near orbit with so many satellites etc. that it is impossible to explore space from surface of the planet itself, and that the “stars of heaven” really are just the reflections of the debris of those objects, and the true object of spaceship day is to try to explore space beyond the “magic”, ie. the satellites and the “stars of heaven”. This true space is the “dark mystery beyond”. The society of This is Spaceship Day is clearly a totalitarian one, ready to sacrifice it's citizens for it's own purposes. The fascistic martial nature of the society also becomes clear with the ease with which Harrison and Yaxley use violence to solve their issues, and how Harrison slaps Dexter for an insignificant slight.
I think you will notice that in the story, there is no mention of anyone coming back from "the dark mystery beyond". Indeed it is implied in the word "mystery" itself, that no one knows exactly what happens to those who take the journey. Supposedly the ritual of spaceship day has been going on for a very long time. You can see this because based on Yaxley's narration there seems to be a sort of mythos around spaceship day. This mythos or ritual nature of spaceship day can also be seen how Hagrid the Table insists that Yaxley and Harrison can’t both be volunteers, because the “rules” state that there must only be one volunteer. You can also see that spaceship day is a frequent occurrence by the “indifference” Hagrid the Table exhibits as he sends yet another group of teenagers to their certain demise. Notice too that no one from the school was volunteering to go immediately, because presumably they all know that no one will ever return from "the dark mystery beyond", but explicitly expressing this thought is not allowed. The only possible alternative to volunteering being silence. This self sacrifice for the progress of science is justified by social norms surrounding spaceship day, which is the most "special day" of special days, the one that "really means something" as Yaxley explains.
I really think that the main character of this story is not Harrison, but Dexter, even though the story is seemingly centered around Harrison. At the second scene Dexter is the one struggling with a bout of cold sweating in the corridor of the school, because unlike Harrison, Dexter knows that it is spaceship day, and what really happens on that day. He is clearly struggling on one hand with the knowledge of the certain death of anyone who "goes" on that special day and on the other hand the social bribes associated with those that go. In a way Harrison is the society itself, it accepts it's norms as such without hesitation, where as Dexter exists only in the sidelines, as the "fiend" that exists only by Harrison deciding for him, just like Dexter does in relation to the society at large. So the centrality of Harrison in the story's narration, only truly underlines how Dexter is the main character, and not Harrison.
When Dexter finally conquers his nagging doubts about the goodness of spaceship day, signified by the end of his cold sweating, and continues with his social programming, he explicitly states that he wishes that someone would ask him to go to "dark mystery beyond", presumably in order for him to be "special" as Yaxley explains everyone will be, who goes to the "dark mystery beyond" on the most special day of special days. Afterall “it is a good thing to go”, as Dexter quotes the moral deepity that is associated with that day. You can also see the power of these social bribes and norms surrounding spaceship day in Harrison's vindictive ”then it will be people who feel not asked”, because presumably being asked to go is “a good thing”, and that everyone should wish to be asked. Even if you don't wish to go when your friend chooses you to go, you really don't have a choice. As Yaxley says, if someone would have apprehensions about going with their friend on the journey, all such questions will be "answered" secondly, on some unspecified moment before departure. So the act of "volunteering" is just a mind play of acquiring consent, while in reality there is no consent needed. Even the very idea of someone questioning whether someone would like to go prompts Yaxley to screech “don’t interrupt”. Vocalizing such thoughts is obviously forbidden. The society of the story is deeply underlined with conformity. Even Harrison who, for some reason didn’t know what spaceship day was, is almost immediately enthusiastic about partaking on the journey, indeed even the thought of not going on the journey made “a great sadness" fill his nostrils, because “going” is seen as something to aspire towards.
These social norms surrounding spaceship day are presumably upheld by the government and the people who control the space program. What is most alarming is that not a single person explicitly states that no one will return from the "dark mystery beyond", while it seems to be an open secret to everyone except Harrison, so talking about the negative aspects of spaceship day must be clamped down by the same authoritarian government that controls the program itself. Another interesting aspect of the story’s society’s control over allowed speech is the language itself that the protagonists speak. It is ridiculously exact and lacking in synonyms, which is not a characteristic of natural languages. When Charlie and Harrison discuss their dinner that happened a year ago, they always use the same phrase “just one year before” to refer to that occurance. This is needlessly exact in reference to the happening itself as explained by the other people and void of emotion, as if they have to speak the exact same words in order to refer to the same event. The government in Today is Spaceship Day clearly controls language in the same cold scientific manner it controls its population's social norms. You can also hear this in the ridiculous way Charlie tries to explain that she likes Harrison, how she is:
“full of ordinary sounding words, but when I say them, and you were there to hear them, all is well with everything”.
The important part, I think is, how Charlie notices that she is full of “ordinary sounding words”. There is no words for love or lust in the Today is Spaceship Day’s society, only “ordinary words” describing “ordinary” objects and intentions. Does the government also control reproduction, when there is no words for love? Perhaps. At the very least the vocabulary surrounding emotions have been severely reduced, exemplified also by how Harrison starts to cry uncontrollably when Charlie reveals her emotions to him even if in such a crude manner, while Harrison himself is unable to express his feelings towards Charlie in words at all. When Harrison and Charlie enter the cockpit, even Charlie herself can’t bring herself to tell Harrison how she feels about him, because they were still on the launch pad, below the “magic” and thus within radio distance. Another clue that natural human reproduction is perhaps something that the society of Today is Spaceship Day doesn’t wish people to engage with is how in the library Dexter explains to Harrison how Charlie’s giggling can make:
“others lose control like some sort of exploding kidney”.
“The others” here possibly being the biological males of the class, but because the vocabulary surrounding gender and reproduction have been severely reduced, the only way Dexter can explain the feeling of the draw of the other sex is by explaining it away as some sort of organ failure. There exists gendered pronouns and terms like “girl” and “boy”, but they seem to have lost their underlying reference to sex and reproduction, being only terms that characterise people’s appearance and nothing more.
I think the most significant part of the story is not what we are lead to believe in the end of the story, that the friends “had learned to deal with all sorts of terrible misfortunes”, because what use are those experiences when all of them are dead in the end? No, the important aspect of the story is when on the spaceship Dexter is finally able to overcome his social programming about spaceship day and his society at large in the solitude of the spaceship corridor, when no one is there to hear, when he is able to admit to himself that the journey "will be the death" of him, speaking the words out loud for the first time in his life in open defiance of the government that oppresses him. This is Dexter finally becoming free, free of the oppressive government that controls every aspect of his life from birth, to the way he speaks and up until the moment he is about to die. This is really a story about Dexter becoming free, ironically at the moment when that freedom itself has become void of meaning, as his freedom of mind is of no use to him anymore, because by partaking on the journey, he is already dead. There is truly no escape from society's restrictive norms in This is Spaceship Day, other than death.
So what is the moral of this story? Is this a critique of the power of social norms and the grasp they have in restricting humane freedom, or a critique of humanity exploring things that they don't understand, in the end sacrificing a piece of themselves? I don’t know.
