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Ambitious Dreams, Pragmatic Means for Reaching Mars

Posted February 2, 2012 By John C Wright

Imagine being a science fiction writer circa 1940 or 1950, and selling to John W Campbell Jr your fictional visions of a future that all right thinking people scoffed at. Then, starting with Kennedy, the Space Race culminates in the Moonshot. The Eagle has landed, and the footprints of Man mark the impossible airless sands of Luna. And then … decades of NASA Bureaucracy, preventable rocket disasters, cost overruns, falling skylabs, astronaut deaths, a dearth of public interest, and no urgent military interest drains the blood the space program, until President Obama calls an end to the major NASA programs.

And fantasy outsells your science fiction project. Young fans think X-Wing fighters make banked turns in space, engines roaring and lasers clearly visible, and that the Force will give the Chosen One mystic powers, rather than – as in the heroes of your day – scientific learning, skullwork and elbow grease.

To such a writer and dreamer the disappointment that 2001 came and went without the Discovery being sent to Jupiter or Saturn was sharp indeed, because he had believed in the dream of space colonization almost from the outset, and had seen it begin with a Moon landing, and end with a whimper. We should have had permanent space stations by now, a Moon base, a manned expedition to Mars.

It comes as a pleasant shock of hope each time someone else speaks out for the dream. This is an article from Robert Zubrin proposing a clever and clear idea to promote a manned Mars mission (excepts below the cut):

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289775/mars-prize-robert-zubrin

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That Will Show Us!

Posted February 2, 2012 By John C Wright

Mark Shea here mentions this odd, ugly, and irresistibly funny disaster:

It seems that a bishop gave a homily at the shrine in Knock in which he reportedly said that godless culture was attacking the Church.

Result: a brain-dead “humanist” decided this was “hate speech” and, you guessed it, attacked the Church by trying to get the bishop brought up on charges.

The being post-Christian Ireland, all this is being treated with great seriousness and nobody is laughing. Prayers for the good bishop and his irony-impaired antagonist would be appreciated.

My comment: One of the articles of faith of modern secular humanism (or whatever its is calling itself these days) is that it has no articles of faith, but instead promotes beliefs that are merely scientific conclusions of objectively verifiable truths. Another article of faith is that Christianity is not the special and particular target of their enmity, and Catholicism even more particularly. Another article of faith is that they are purely rational and enlightened, motivated by pure altruism, and that their foes are purely irrational yet ignorant, motivated by pure hatred and bigotry. Therefore, by definition, whenever worldly men insult or attack the Church, the Church is always the party in the wrong, always the aggressor, always benighted and evil. You don’t want the Spanish Inquisition back, do you?

The Enlightened (or whatever) grow quite irate when you ask them to justify any of their articles of faith. It requires an elaborate mental effort on their part to hide from themselves the fact that they can neither justify their faith with reason, nor admit that they take their faith on faith.

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Christopher Stasheff, the Soothsayer in Spite of Himself

Posted February 2, 2012 By John C Wright

In a recent post on the Essential Authors of SF, more than one reader asks why I did not include Christopher Stasheff on the list of authors who, if one has not read, one cannot boast oneself a well read SF fan.

My answer is that I artificially limited myself to fifty authors, lest the list grow beyond all bounds, and I that listed authors by their influence in the field. In my judgment Mr Stasheff did not exert any more influence on the field than, say, Sterling E Lanier or Jack L Chalker or Lyndon Hardy. All these men are fine writers, and put out a workmanlike product, but I would not rank them in the highest echelon of writers who, if you have not read at least once, you cannot call yourself a true SF fan.

Having said that, let me mention a personal reason why I admire the work of Christopher Stasheff. He has a special place in my heart for exactly one scene in THE WARLOCK UNLOCKED. I remember this scene for a reason that will seem absurd to most of you.

It was the only scene that ever told me the facts of life without lying to me about it.

It is a scene where a priest comes across a nymph by the water side.

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