Today is a beautiful day ...
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Darkness, dawn, sunrise, birds, a shark, flowers, more birds ... these are the things that I love about the Earth. I know that this might sound unbelievable to you but it is true:
Some people really do want to leave the Earth.
What a sad goal. These people would trade life on a living planet for life on a sterile ball of dust and rock, either the moon or Mars. Thankfully this is an event which will never happen.
Humankind belongs to the Earth. The Universe belongs to itself. Note I did not say that the Earth belongs to humankind. Humans presently, momentarily, dominate the Earth to our own harm and great sorrow and inevitable extinction. Nature owns the Earth and humankind. Nature will do whatever it wishes.
So what of dreams of humans colonizing the moon and Mars? These dreams are dying right now:
Forty years after it first landed men on the Moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has little chance of repeating that accomplishment by the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
Maybe not even by the 60th.
...
In fact, NASA might not reach the Moon’s surface even by 2030, the panel concluded. Extending the life of the space station diverted even more money from the Moon efforts. Meeting the current goal of getting back to the Moon by 2020 might require an additional $50 billion.
No alternative plan fits the budget, either, the panel said. "Our view is that it will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that’s terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area," Norman Augustine, a former chief executive of Lockheed Martin and the panel’s chairman, said during its last public meeting on Aug. 12.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Humans aren't ever going to return to the moon. Humans aren't ever going to visit Mars.
It is no great loss, either.
The era of human spaceflight will end in the 21st century.
The airplane era will end in the 21st century.
The automobile era will end in the 21st century.
The United States of America and technological civilization will both collapse in the 21st century.
That's the future whether you like it or not, whether you accept it or deny it, whether you are happy or you are sad ...
Humans belong to the Earth. The Earth doesn't belong to humankind.
Humans evolved on the Earth. Humans will also go extinct on the Earth.
This world in which you are living is passing away.
Let it.
Move on.
David Mathews
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