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And Never The Twain Shall Meet...; What novels tie the different parts?
Topic Started: Dec 14 2007, 05:45 AM (1,247 Views)
starexplorer
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I was 10 and thought the same. Sad thing is, we could have been. 


You're right Aja-ji. It could have been.
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Busifer

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Now, afterwards, I think I was extremely naïve, but I too was sure humanity had a future in space. It wasn't until after the launch of the first space shuttle I realised that no, most humans don't think exploring space is worth the money.
But in the early 70's I took it for granted that there would be a Mars colony within my lifetime... and look at us now :-(

At least there's still a lot of probe launching etc. going on. But I guess no one want to spend money on researching and solving the radiation issue, among others...
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El Ronin
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Wow. Right there on page 316. Clear as day.

I just realized something. I always meant to get back to those A/U civics lessons when I finished Cyteen, but I always forgot. Yes, I skipped those middle parts. Now it seems I need to know them.
I have not read Angel with the Sword. I'll have to track that down during Christmas break.

Thank you ALL who jumped in so quickly to answer and this one apologizes for seemingly abandoning the thread. Life called and would not let me go.
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griffinmoon
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El Ronin nadi:
Not to worry: RL does that. We understand these things...
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Eupathic Impulse
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I was 10 and thought the same. Sad thing is, we could have been.


No, we couldn't. And not necessarily for any technical reason. Because, for some reason, our society is not set up that way. Not set up to take care of both the general welfare and the collective future. In fact, it almost seems like it was explicitly set up to take care of neither, and to continually restrict our opportunities to do so.

So, no, we couldn't have been.
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starexplorer
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So it was preordained by our very nature , Eup?
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Eupathic Impulse
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No, I wouldn't say that. I'd say it was foreordained by political choices that had been made before humans set foot on the moon.
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Busifer

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Such a sad and fatalistic view on things...
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starexplorer
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I do hate to agree with Eup, so contrarian are his general sensibilities, but one haas to admit that the great ideals intoned by Kennedy as he invested the space program with a sense of mission -- the ideals many of us believed in and still believe in -- took place in the setting of the Cold War, a highly unidealistic reality. Only some of us retained the imperative and the vision after the "War to the Moon" was won.

Further, humans are notoriously poor at preparing for the future. We have enough trouble with putting up a new traffic light before there have been several accidents at the intersection, let alone desisting from pouring planet-changing gases into the atmosphere.

So it would have been singularly forward-looking (and forward-spending!) to have pushed aggressively onward into space.

And I will always regret that decision, and the politics that underlie it.
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Xheralt
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Another History
song and lyrics by Bill Sutton © 1986


Of all sad words for tongue or pen, the saddest are these -- It might have been

It was 1969 when man first touched Lunar ground;
the cheering of the nation carried hope within its sound.
Then, the day the President had dared another race --
'We can and shall be first' he said, 'to live and work in space!'

And I think, where would we be, if we hadn't gone this way?
And how would we be living on that other sunny day?
Would we have the things that we have now?
Have we won or have we lost?
Would we have been here anyway?
Would we want to pay the cost?


In 1972 the shuttle lifted from the pad,
by 1976 an L-5 colony we had;
in '78 we headed out, returning to the moon,
establishing a Lunar base and expanding through the gloom

(chorus)

And yet I sit and wonder as the Earth goes sliding by,
and watch the pale sun rising in the airless Lunar sky,
if Orwell could have seen then what I'm seeing every day,
he never would have guessed that '84 would end that way!

(chorus 2x)
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Theta9
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A couple of years back I remember somebody on another forum saying:

"I'm not upset that I'm too young to remember the first moon landing. I'm upset that I'm too young to remember the last moon landing."
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starexplorer
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Good quotes both. Thanks.
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Asicho
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Theta9,Dec 25 2007
11:14 PM
"I'm not upset that I'm too young to remember the first moon landing.  I'm upset that I'm too young to remember the last moon landing."

Yes! This is very annoying. It is "the future" now, the dawn of the 21st century, and we have all these cool things that we didn't have then (including this Internet, which has changed so many lives)--and yet I, who am nearly thirty, was born after humans stopped landing on the moon. It makes me very sad. The only space events I have ever seen happening in real-time are shuttle flights.

There are good signs out there, including the various Mars probes and the Chinese and European attempts at spaceflight, so I don't despair entirely that something truly interesting might happen in my lifetime yet. Perhaps it won't be NASA who goes to space for real--but just so long as someone does, the human race will have done so.

I still proudly admit to having had "astronaut" as my first childhood career ambition, though. :wub:
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Busifer

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The homepage for NASA's mission to return to the moon - http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constell...main/index.html

...so maybe it's not hopeless? ;-)

/posted by another one who's first career ambition ever was to be an astronaut/
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starexplorer
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It seems a surprising number of us had that ambition!
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