It is friday, and I am late.
We ask the Great and Mighty iPod: is there a reason for us to get a manned presence off Earth on a time scale of a century or less?
Whoosh goes the randomizer:
Whoosh...
- The Covering: Boy Done Good - Billy Bragg
- The Crossing: Don't Leave Me Now - Pink Floyd
- The Crown: Train Train - Billy Bragg
- The Root: Eisler on the Go - Billy Bragg
- The Past: No Puede Ser - Three Tenors
- The Future: Come un bel di di maggio - Pavarotti
- The Questioner: In the Midnight Hour - Maloko
- The House: Carnival of the Animals
- The Inside: Bílavísur - Björk
- The Outcome: Nicaragua, Nicaraguita - Billy Bragg
Future looks good, but the Crossing speaks clear and the Past is quite literal.
The Outcome is revolution and liberation. The Inside tells us we need a new vehicle, I'll take the associated ode to masculinity as literal, no sardonic... the spring in the ass is a good reminder of the bumps on the road ahead.
I decree that we will go, but it will take a little bit longer than the Prof Hawking thought desirable, and it will not be a smooth road.
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The iTunes selection of two random strangers in Connecticut this morning...
Joe's iPod
The most important long-term reason is to "back up" the human (and other) species against planetary disasters. My grandparent's home contained books written in the 1940's claiming that humans would never reach the Moon. While short-term technological progress tends to disappoint, in the long term human achievement ALWAYS surprises us. In 1969, who would have thought we would all have cell phones and computers? People will also go into Space for purely practical and capitalistic reasons, like getting new sources of energy.