This may be the only thing Newt Gingrich (who polled at under 10% in New Hampshire with 98% of precincts reporting) and I have in common: we both believe in colonizing outer-space. It probably has to do with the three posters on my wall growing up: one of Leia, one of Luke, and one of Jean-Luc Picard. Then an adolescence spent reading sword and sorcery, and space operas like Honor Harrington, The Warlock In Spite of Himself, and Powers That Be.
I’m buoyed by SETI’s Twitter feed and any video which auto-tunes Carl Sagan:
Yes, space flight has had a terrible cost in lives and is rough on our national budget. But I think the first cave-dwellers spent centuries dying on the nearest rocks trying to cross the great lakes of Africa, or its thousand-mile rivers, or its bounding oceans. So I don’t freak out when my country stops funding space-flight with people–NASA’s still hiring Astronauts. We have centuries to get used to navigating our upper atmosphere, making hops to our local reefs and islands.
I know we’ll get there someday.
Inspirational Quote:
“I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”–Arthur C Clarke, The View from Serendip, page 238, 1977.
