I think we are not ready to go to Mars or anywhere else actually. We need to earn the right, and we are currently destroying this planet. I don't mean focussing on this planet as if it were some kind of narcissism or lessening of the human prospect -- I mean that we understand too little of ourselves as earthlings to be of any use elsewhere in the universe. We will only carry -- like the first explorers of North America -- the germs of our own stupidity and carelessness elsewhere.

I didn't use to think like this. One of the happiest hours of my life was spend in the company of Gus Grissom, when I was a kid, and we talked about space and the future and what it was going to be like. When he died I mourned for days.   But it was a romantic gesture, and like many of those gestures, good for what it was. I think we need to pause and save ourselves here first.

yours,

Peter T.