The Case for Human Space Exploration

“We have been given hands to touch the miraculous. We have been given hearts to know the incredible. Can we shrink back to bed in our funeral clothes? Mars says we cannot.”

-- Ray Bradbury, Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars

The Dragon spacecraft has completed its historic mission to the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth. Though SpaceX, its designer, says that the vehicle can be rapidly repurposed for manned missions in the future, there were no humans aboard.

The reasons to send robotic craft into space are numerous. The reasons to send human beings into space number very few: because we must; because it is our destiny. Because our history as a people is a history of exploration -- we will cease to be ourselves if we do not go to space, and we will be changed when we do; such is the nature of life.

TV Is a Service

Today, "TV" proximally means one or both of two things:

1. A large glass panel on which moving pictures are displayed, and/or
2. A network of distribution interests responsible for choosing which of those pictures should appear on which of those screens at which times.

Both meanings are shallow; they tell us very little about what TV is for or why anyone cares. The first is purely a technical description, and the latter says more about entrenched economic interests than it does about problems to be solved.