A Quote for the Weekend

by | Dec 11, 2004 | Culture and Society

“Future historians will give a few paragraphs to the Saturn rockets that took us to the Moon, the shuttle that conquered Low Earth Orbit, and the aerospace plane, but they are likely to spend much more time looking at the underlying principles on which their own civilization was founded. They will know that physical technologies are the vessels for the exploration that takes place in human societies, but are not the essence of the transformations that they engender.”

Frank White, from The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 161.

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In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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