Meanwhile, In Space
Going off Earth for a moment, van der Leun at American Digest puts all these terrestial squabbles into perspective. It’s about some of the fundamental ways in which humans rock. When they are not being petty, corrupt, etc. With Hamlet.
Good kickoff for some Saturday morning deep thot. My grandfather was born before man flew. His first-born son was killed in a great global air war, less than 40 years after man’s first flight. My grandfather never flew in a plane himself, though he traveled almost as far as you can go on Earth and back by sea a few times in an age when the world had been made significantly smaller. He lived to see a man set foot on the Moon, and space flight become routine. And to see that great achievement humbled. I have no idea what he thought about all that, but the span and some of the circumstances of his life tell a great and terrible story.
I’ve thought that if my beer truck hits me tomorrow, I’ll die content that I’ve got to see a lot of this world, and the great and terrible things in it. But as van der Leun suggests, to see what others have done in our time is also a satisfaction, and a great consolation when so much else of human affairs remains mired in pre-launch decades and centuries.
That said, if we have to remain mired in our humanity largely as it has been lo these many millenia, I’m really glad now that we’re in space on a fairly consistent basis, our alternative future doesn’t include the Mod jackets and plastic pod furniture once thought inevitable. And while the computers have started talking, they haven’t started talking back yet.
Also, that the UN has nothing to do with it. That, and also that the Russians are involved … as cheap contract labor.
Topics: ancient mysteries, science
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:31 am Comments (1) on Saturday, May 16, 2009
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May 16th, 2009 at 11:04 am
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