tears in my eyes
Oct. 5th, 2004 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burnunitWe have done it. We have slipped the surly bonds of earth. Here's an article about Space Ship One1
As I write this, we witness the dawning of a new age.
You might think "what the hell do the rich need to go into space for?" Yeah, that's the benefit of wealth, I suppose. But the point isn't just that billionaires get to see outer space before I do. The point is a gargantuan government agency funded by taxpayer dollars no longer has a monopoly on the stars. This is good for about a bazillion reasons. Look, I think we should spend taxpayer dollars on space travel. But I don't think we should be the only ones, nor should NASA.
Imagine it: space is ridiculously vast. Imagine the tiny footprints of humanity in all that perfect diamond-hard blackness.
They call it space tourism. Fine. But it's more, too. Tourists still discover, our great human consciousness still expands, no matter who does the pushing.
We take our great diversity into the stars: our wealthy and privileged, our governments, military, communications, science...but soon, now, soon our tiny, our dirty, our Jews and Hindus, artists and singers, killers, thieves, loonies (and Loonies! Heinlein lives!) the fanatic and the freethinker. "They should have sent a poet," she said. Soon enough they will.
"The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;/It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;/I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;/I am mad for it to be in contact with me. (...)"I am large, I contain multitudes" !!!
climb with me climb
we scale the air
and never come back
put light beneath me
and set me free
o earth! o beloved,
we're headed upward,
out of the sweet paralysis
of your embrace
farewell mother
we will bring you treasures
the fiery heart of stars
the glint of distant secrets
hidden behind the veils of night
jewels and rubies from heaven
and the caress of strange oceans
beneath tiny winking moons
we hope you welcome us back
1 5G is not 5 atmospheres. The article is sort of dumb on that- g stands for gravity! atmospheres is air pressure! durrr
As I write this, we witness the dawning of a new age.
You might think "what the hell do the rich need to go into space for?" Yeah, that's the benefit of wealth, I suppose. But the point isn't just that billionaires get to see outer space before I do. The point is a gargantuan government agency funded by taxpayer dollars no longer has a monopoly on the stars. This is good for about a bazillion reasons. Look, I think we should spend taxpayer dollars on space travel. But I don't think we should be the only ones, nor should NASA.
Imagine it: space is ridiculously vast. Imagine the tiny footprints of humanity in all that perfect diamond-hard blackness.
They call it space tourism. Fine. But it's more, too. Tourists still discover, our great human consciousness still expands, no matter who does the pushing.
We take our great diversity into the stars: our wealthy and privileged, our governments, military, communications, science...but soon, now, soon our tiny, our dirty, our Jews and Hindus, artists and singers, killers, thieves, loonies (and Loonies! Heinlein lives!) the fanatic and the freethinker. "They should have sent a poet," she said. Soon enough they will.
"The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;/It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;/I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;/I am mad for it to be in contact with me. (...)"I am large, I contain multitudes" !!!
climb with me climb
we scale the air
and never come back
put light beneath me
and set me free
o earth! o beloved,
we're headed upward,
out of the sweet paralysis
of your embrace
farewell mother
we will bring you treasures
the fiery heart of stars
the glint of distant secrets
hidden behind the veils of night
jewels and rubies from heaven
and the caress of strange oceans
beneath tiny winking moons
we hope you welcome us back
1 5G is not 5 atmospheres. The article is sort of dumb on that- g stands for gravity! atmospheres is air pressure! durrr