Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Building lifeboats

TCS Daily - The Ultimate Lifeboat

James Pinkerton does a good job in explaining why space colonization is a good and important goal, as a lifeboat for humanity.

Funny how this idea seemingly got lost from any mainstream airing for something like three decades!

Of course, science fiction readers (at least those who liked it before the genre went mostly interior and pessimistic with cyberpunk, the rise of fantasy, and the dubious quality of neverending reincarnations of Star Trek and Star Wars) always understood that this was the point of having an active space program, but they just weren't able to say it out loud without fear of ridicule.

The ridicule is indeed still there, and, as Zoe Brain noted, a surprisingly large amount of it can now come from young scientist types. Shame on them.

Anyway, good to have it out in the open again, and NASA actually going back to a place where there might be somewhere you can live without having to take even your own water. (The Moon.)

No comments: