Thanks Johnson, nice video. America has such a Star Trek myth, and cancelling the shuttle program creates a sort of loss of meaning and purpose for a people who have been expanding into new frontiers since Plymouth Rock. My view is that the real next frontier is the ocean, as a way to fix our planet before colonizing space.
The first line of the opening voiceover in Star Trek
Origin
This introductory text was spoken at the beginning of many Star Trek television episodes and films:
Space: The final frontier
These are the voyages of the Starship, Enterprise
Its 5 year mission
To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before
Re: A voice for reason
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:39 am
by johnson1010
Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks about our interconnected universe.
The immense distance to the stars in the galaxies means that we see everything in space, in the past.
Some as they were before the earth came to be.
Telescopes are time machines.
Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light into the surrounding darkness, no witness could have known that billions of years later some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to make a place called earth.
Or that life would arise. And that thinking beings would evolve who would one day capture a little of that galactic light and try to puzzle out what had sent it on it's way.
And after the earth dies, some five billion years from now... after it is burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the sun, there will be other worlds. And other stars, and galaxies coming into being.
And they will know nothing of a place once called earth.
Galileo stood outside the court and said, "And still it moves,..." after being forced to capitulate.
Pat Robertson sat on tv and said that one can, "calm the storm," with prayer. He was referring to the recent outbreak of tornadoes that, according to him, were the result of not enough people praying.
People believe what they want to believe, I guess.
When some evangelist heals Stephen Hawking, I suppose I'll have to rethink things a bit. Until then, I'm firmly on the side of the critically thinking skeptic. I see no reason to spend time and money chasing an ever receding horizon.