The moon is almost full. Tomorrow it will be. Yesterday marks the 25th anniversary of the first landing of men on the moon.
I was 18 in 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I had read stories about the possibility of such a feat for over 10 years since I discovered Robert Heinlein and his juvenile science fiction books; Have Spacesuit Will Travel, The Rolling Stones, Farmer in the Sky, and all the others. Suddenly I was staring the fact in the face. I watched the TV raptly along with millions of others as Neil and Buzz Aldrin danced across the Lunar landscape in that unforgetable low gravity waltz that they quickly developed.
Now it's 25 years later, middle age is upon me and I still havn't been to the moon :-(
I have instead been to Cyberspace. In fact I spend an increasing amount of my time there and could be said to not only live there but to be actively building additions to it. I'm not sure that I will ever forgive the US government for not continuing the moon program, but I fervently thank them for what has grown out of the billions of dollars worth of pure research that was done in the quest leading up to the moon landing, and since. Much of the technological world I live in owes its very existence to that concerted effort to land a man on the moon ahead of the Russians.
A radio talk show I was listening to yesterday asked the question of its listeners "Was it (the billions spent) worth it?"
I didn't get a chance to call in, but if I had I would have had to say "Yes it was." The technology pioneered in the research done for the moon program, as well as later space explorations up to the present, has allowed us to develop an incredibly sophisticated society. One which has grown more and more to use and rely upon communications in its everyday life.
I believe that the human race's future lies in extending its domain past the atmosphere of the Earth. In the mean time, making the best of the current environment should be our prime concern. The high profile of environmental groups, the moves to recycling, the images of the suffering millions in poorer countries - all serve to remind us that we must work together to solve our human problems while we develop the expertise to jump off into the vastly larger arena of space. The incredible amount of expertise available via the facilities of the Internet have made some of the work towards all of these problems much easier than would have been possible without it.
I want to be part of 'the solution' rather than 'part of the problem', and towards that end I am making Wimsey's facilities available to many groups that we at Wimsey feel are working in the right directions. You will see such things as the BC Skeptics Society, and soon the BC Science Fiction Association. Both of these groups are very forward looking and peopled by some of the more brilliant people in the Vancouver area. We will continue to look at proposals from the BC area for adding new information groups to our Magazine Store. In this way we help to both build Cyberspace, and to build the hopes and capabilities of those who want to see the human race grow and prosper.
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