To get to the spaceship convention I have to go to Chattanooga. To a former train depot once called Terminal Station, a beaux-arts building downtown, which was built in a time when trains were the apex of industry—the smartest, fastest, most high-tech way to move through space—and when stations were elegant ports of call. It has a soaring dome, and the bathrooms are naturally lit through stained glass.
Terminal Station closed in 1970, not quite a year after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The building reopened in 1973, four months after the Apollo program ended, as the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. The new owners put a neon train on the roof, the concourse beneath the freestanding dome became a lobby, and the baggage room became a dining hall. Passenger cars were moored to the rails and refurbished as luxury suites. The iron horse engine became a thing for guests to climb aboard for selfies. The outbuildings and rail yards sprouted a gift shop, a pizza parlor, a comedy club, an indoor jungle-themed swimming pool, and an outdoor doughnut-shaped swimming pool, among other things.
Chattanooga is not quite the regional transportation hub it was in the latter golden age of rail travel, and in fact these days is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. So after 12 hours of planes, delays, and courtesy shuttles, I drop my baggage in my room and go looking for a drink.
The spaceship convention mostly happens in the drab convention center adjacent to the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. But the hospitality suite is at the end of a long and—to my eyes—superlatively Southern garden in what used to be the rail yard. Arriving late, I almost walk right by, except this giant logo catches my eye. It is a giant spaceship and star swoosh—aesthetically similar to an Apollo-era mission patch—printed on a freestanding cardboard poster on a buffet table inside the suite. I can see it through parted curtains; I also see people mingling. And, are those people holding alcoholic beverages?
Yes they are. “Have you ever seen an Alpha Centauri sunrise?” says Robert Kennedy III, standing near the door with two other men also named Robert. I assumed Kennedy III was talking about the triple star system closest to our own solar system. Based on proximity alone, the system is a prime candidate for humanity’s first interstellar trip and therefore a conversational topic one would not be surprised to wander into at the spaceship convention. Nope. Kennedy III is trying to offer me a cocktail—specifically the peach-colored thing he and the other Roberts are drinking from clear plastic cups.
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