May 19, 2023·edited May 19, 2023Liked by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
A wonderful piece Perfesser. The Morrison quote is quite uplifting. You bring up several points of interest I knew nothing about - and I had thought myself rather informed on space since my days as a model rocket flying lad.
I hope you will continue to write on this subject.
I have a new grand daughter who I hope and expect will live to see the 22nd Century. I hope and dream that my great grandchildren, some of them, will live on Luna or Mars, or even crew the first starships. I envy them their adventure, but they’ll carry some small part of me outward.
I'm 70. I've been feeling pretty blue recently, not just about how old I've gotten (how the hell did I get this old?) but about where we humans are and where we are headed. It's hard to stay optimistic. But there is "up there." That is the thing that in the corner of my mind offers me a glimmer of hope. When William Shatner went "up there," I thought, maybe I can too. Well, maybe not. I'm not a multimillionaire celebrity and it's unlikely that Elon Musk would offer me a free ride. My baby boy (mid-30's) went skydiving last weekend, the day before Mother's Day. On a whim. Thank God he didn't tell me until he landed and sent me a video of his landing (my Mother's Day gift). I told him next time he goes, I am, too. Not to jump...just to watch him jump. I hope there is a chance that he makes it "up there." Thanks for rekindling that glimmer of hope, Professor.
I look back and wonder about the students who took Dr. Gorove's class. I doubt his classes were large. I don't recall it being a time for looking at the sky. The big ideas were in the heads of Dicky Scruggs and Mike Moore....or at least they soon would be. Well done Glenn. Now you need a long, dark raincoat and walk in the rain to class kinda humped over fully absorbed in your own thoughts.....just like Groovy.
The Pilgrims looked upon Massachusetts as ‘desolate’, as we are reminded each year when the Wall Street Journal re-prints its Thanksgiving editorial, “Unto a Desolate Land”. Englishmen of that time also used the word ‘desert’ to mean pretty much the same thing—uninhabited.
If we reason, as Reynolds does, from 17th century English words, while using their 21st century meanings, we greatly err. Professor of Law he might be, but not of English.
Desolate though the New World appeared, the waters were full of fish, the woods, of game, the soil tillable, and strange men flitted through the trees. New World, yes, but not New Earth.
The Puritans’ hope of surviving and thriving was rational. Glenn Reynolds thinks that our solar system will support trillions of people. The 18th century had a word for such thinking. They called it ‘chimerical projection’.
I'm quite aware of 17th Century usage. I also know that the Pilgrims nearly starved their first year because they were unable to exploit available resources. Likewise the American midwest seemed useless until the sodbuster plow was invented.
Mars and Massachusetts are/were not ‘desolate’ in the same sense of the word, yet you lean upon the experience of the Pilgrims as if they were. If the Mayflower had arrived at Staten Island in May instead of Massachusetts at the end of Fall, their experience would have been very different.
-- When Cortes marched into Tenochtitlan, he beheld what was perhaps the largest city on earth--and one utterly unknown in the Old World till that day. With a nod to Donald Rumsfeld, the unknown unknowns can be far more interesting than the known unknowns.
-- In the 1970s, I knew a man whose work with NASA brought him a certificate promising him priority access to seats on early PanAm flights to the moon. With apologies to Stanley Kubrick, this continues the pattern that the names you imagine will be the great innovators rarely are. The company that renders SpaceX obsolete should be REALLY interesting.
-- Who will be the Emilio Palma of the Moon. Argentina flew his mother to Antarctica in 1978 to give birth there in older to bolster Argentine sovereignty over its claims in that continent. Someone once told me that while thumbing through an Argentine phonebook, they noticed that the map of area code-equivalents included Argentina's purported pie-slice of Antarctica. (I imagine that it included the Falklands, as well.) (Bob at https://graboyes.substack.com)
Glenn, I don’t remember reading whether you’ve ever considered cryonics? I too suspect that ours may be the last generation to die of old age, but cryonics is my hope of jumping the line.
A wonderful piece Perfesser. The Morrison quote is quite uplifting. You bring up several points of interest I knew nothing about - and I had thought myself rather informed on space since my days as a model rocket flying lad.
I hope you will continue to write on this subject.
I have a new grand daughter who I hope and expect will live to see the 22nd Century. I hope and dream that my great grandchildren, some of them, will live on Luna or Mars, or even crew the first starships. I envy them their adventure, but they’ll carry some small part of me outward.
Here is life or here is dying;
only sin is lack of trying.
Grab your picks and grab your shovels;
dig latrines and build your hovels —
next year better,
next year stronger,
next year’s furrows that much longer.
R.A.H.
I'm 70. I've been feeling pretty blue recently, not just about how old I've gotten (how the hell did I get this old?) but about where we humans are and where we are headed. It's hard to stay optimistic. But there is "up there." That is the thing that in the corner of my mind offers me a glimmer of hope. When William Shatner went "up there," I thought, maybe I can too. Well, maybe not. I'm not a multimillionaire celebrity and it's unlikely that Elon Musk would offer me a free ride. My baby boy (mid-30's) went skydiving last weekend, the day before Mother's Day. On a whim. Thank God he didn't tell me until he landed and sent me a video of his landing (my Mother's Day gift). I told him next time he goes, I am, too. Not to jump...just to watch him jump. I hope there is a chance that he makes it "up there." Thanks for rekindling that glimmer of hope, Professor.
I look back and wonder about the students who took Dr. Gorove's class. I doubt his classes were large. I don't recall it being a time for looking at the sky. The big ideas were in the heads of Dicky Scruggs and Mike Moore....or at least they soon would be. Well done Glenn. Now you need a long, dark raincoat and walk in the rain to class kinda humped over fully absorbed in your own thoughts.....just like Groovy.
The Pilgrims looked upon Massachusetts as ‘desolate’, as we are reminded each year when the Wall Street Journal re-prints its Thanksgiving editorial, “Unto a Desolate Land”. Englishmen of that time also used the word ‘desert’ to mean pretty much the same thing—uninhabited.
If we reason, as Reynolds does, from 17th century English words, while using their 21st century meanings, we greatly err. Professor of Law he might be, but not of English.
Desolate though the New World appeared, the waters were full of fish, the woods, of game, the soil tillable, and strange men flitted through the trees. New World, yes, but not New Earth.
The Puritans’ hope of surviving and thriving was rational. Glenn Reynolds thinks that our solar system will support trillions of people. The 18th century had a word for such thinking. They called it ‘chimerical projection’.
I'm quite aware of 17th Century usage. I also know that the Pilgrims nearly starved their first year because they were unable to exploit available resources. Likewise the American midwest seemed useless until the sodbuster plow was invented.
Mars and Massachusetts are/were not ‘desolate’ in the same sense of the word, yet you lean upon the experience of the Pilgrims as if they were. If the Mayflower had arrived at Staten Island in May instead of Massachusetts at the end of Fall, their experience would have been very different.
There is no May on Mars!
Random thoughts:
-- When Cortes marched into Tenochtitlan, he beheld what was perhaps the largest city on earth--and one utterly unknown in the Old World till that day. With a nod to Donald Rumsfeld, the unknown unknowns can be far more interesting than the known unknowns.
-- In the 1970s, I knew a man whose work with NASA brought him a certificate promising him priority access to seats on early PanAm flights to the moon. With apologies to Stanley Kubrick, this continues the pattern that the names you imagine will be the great innovators rarely are. The company that renders SpaceX obsolete should be REALLY interesting.
-- Who will be the Emilio Palma of the Moon. Argentina flew his mother to Antarctica in 1978 to give birth there in older to bolster Argentine sovereignty over its claims in that continent. Someone once told me that while thumbing through an Argentine phonebook, they noticed that the map of area code-equivalents included Argentina's purported pie-slice of Antarctica. (I imagine that it included the Falklands, as well.) (Bob at https://graboyes.substack.com)
Me too.
Glenn, I don’t remember reading whether you’ve ever considered cryonics? I too suspect that ours may be the last generation to die of old age, but cryonics is my hope of jumping the line.