As for the crew, may they rest in peace. And may we not rest, neither in peace nor in war. Mankind should be in space. Why?
I pick out two favorites from her list:
for a passion honoured by every age but ours: glory, be it personal, national or international...and for sheer joy.
Passions not honored but still as needful to man as the air we breathe, because without the dreams of and the striving for that high frontier, society is just that - a society merely, a home for ants, not a human civilization.
I saw this sad picture, and I do not know how I immediately came to think of the opening pages of one of my childhood favorites: Guy Murchie's Music of the Spheres, wherein he answers, if I remember it rightly, the usual objections to space exploration - Why do this? Why take the risks? Why the expense and the trouble and the danger when there are so many problems here on Earth to solve? He answers with a question himself (which I probably do not reproduce verbatim) - Do you think you were made for Earth troubles alone?
Posted by Moira Breen at February 02, 2003 08:50 PM