Per Aspera ad Astra / We Coulda Been a Contender

The questioning mind of Man...that by and by

From the void's rim returns with swooning eye,

Having seen himself into the maelstrom spill.

O race of Adam, blench not lest you find

In the sun's bubbling bowl anonymous death,

Or lost in whistling space without a mind

To monstrous Nothing yield your little breath:

You shall achieve destruction where you stand,

In intimate conflict, at your brother's hand.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from sonnet XV of “Epitaph for the Race of Man”

An O'Niell Torus, an inside view, circa 1976.

The end of an attempt at the ultimate "sustainability" project?

Those of you who know me personally know that I am not a fan of the Shuttle. I have always viewed it as a compromise, low bid vehicle. I have though always viewed the struggle to rise from the earth, in the same way I view the struggle of life to take to the land. That effort is simply duty to our specie. Right now, we are in the cosmic sense certainly on the Galactic Red List, if there is one. :)

But with the economic climate and the abundance of incurious idiots (in the original Greek sense of the term), the last shuttle flight may mark the end of the U.S. crewed space effort.

Those of you in on the early days of "ecological design" may remember these two:

A Coevolution Quarterly book, edited by Stewart Brandhttp://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/CoEvolutionBook/index.html

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/75SummerStudy/Design.html

A final word.

When the late Gus Grissom (killed along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Rodger Chaffee  during a pre-launch test for first Apollo mission), was asked by Oriana Fallaci why he was doing what he did, with all the risk, his response was, "What if the sun dies?". Fallaci used that as the title for her 1966 book about the U.S. space program, If the Sun Dies.The book was written for her father, who thought it was a waste of money.

Here is the end of that book.

" We are separated from each other father, maybe lost to each other, but I feel full of hope, of desparate optimism.
A man, a brother had gone. Other men, other brothers would go, suddenly cut down like a trunk of a tree struck by an axe. I too would go, God knew where, God knew when the axe would strike and cut me down too, I want to live, and hate death, but the world remained a long promise and the sky was offering thousands of lighted homes. And if the Earth dies, and if the Sun dies, we shall live up there, father. Cost what it may: a tree, a billion trees, all the trees that life has given us."