langreiter.com plain, simple: 2007-10-05

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2007-10-05

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 6259 days AGO

Arthur C. Clarke: "While manned spaceflight and Moon landings were widely speculated about, many still harboured doubts about an American lead in space. One delegate, noticing that there were 23 American and five Soviet papers at the [1957] Congress, remarked that while the Americans talked a lot about spaceflight, the Russians just went ahead and did it!"

"[...] [S]pace travel is a technological mutation that should not really have arrived until the 21st century. But thanks to the ambition and genius of [Wernher von Braun] and Sergei Korolev, and their influence upon individuals as disparate as Kennedy and Khrushchev, the Moon—like the South Pole—was reached half a century ahead of time."

"A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would only add about hundred dollars to your electricity bill."

"When the Space Elevator becomes a reality in the coming decades, the most expensive components of orbital travel will be in-flight movies and catering."

"I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy, if only because it offers us the opportunity of self-fulfilling prophecy."

2007-10-05-justDoIt

Boing Boing in Bild und Ton: Boing Boing TV.

2007-10-05-bbtv