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Michael Martin-Smith  |
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Author Info
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unregistered user
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ID/Subject
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"A Great Day!" |
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Date/Time
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21-06-04, 09:52 PM (GMT) |
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Message
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As you will surely know by now, Scaled Composites' ace test pilot , Mike Melvill, has become the first privately launched, and funded astronaut, flying a privately built spaceship ( SpaceshipOne) - thus opening up, we all hope, a true Space Age for millions of enterprising and adventurous people.
I am indeed planning to work a year beyond my planned retirement in order to follow suit, as a whole new industry develops before our eyes. There will be many like me as the years unfold - Apollo's children .
From Columbus to the Pilgrim Fathers fully 120 years had to pass - from today to the first true Extra-Terrestrial Civilization will surely be a significantly lesser interval.
Whereas the inventors of speech, fire and the calendar, and the first settlers of Australia and Polynesia remain forever nameless, we are privileged to have witnessed and named the progenitors of a vast and evolutionary human Diaspora, whose ultimate fruit could be Galactic in scope.
It is good and timely to set our present woes against this more majestic and hopeful canvas, if we are not to drown materially and spiritually in our own trivia.
Above all the weasel plea for tax payers' money, spent on Space projects, to be diverted to more "deserving" causes ( as if that would ever actually benefit the poor or the planet) can be laid to rest.
What a day!
Michael Martin-Smith
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