“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, December 01, 2014

If you like sci-fi, you'll enjoy this

This is like all my favorite space exploration films in one. I should seriously go back and read some more Carl Sagan, who narrated this. 

Each of the places depicted is a real place in our solar system. From grabbing an elevator in a gravity well on Mars, to human-powered flight on Titan, to trekking the ice fields of Europa, to mining an asteroid....human exploration and colonization of our solar system is represented here.

Watch in full screen mode and turn up the speakers.

                    

5 comments:

Bill said...

Sagan, RIP, was a mixed bag. He turned on a lot of people to space, astronomy, and science. However, he supported causes such as the "nuclear freeze" that would have made Soviet triumph more likely, and he was a proto-global warming alarmist.

Pretty sure he was an atheist also, so maybe the RIP doesn't apply. He just " isn't."

Ed said...

Ayn Rand was an atheist too, but no book had as profound effect on me as Atlas. I also generally despise artists personally, but I can enjoy their art nevertheless.

It is in this spirit that I enjoy Sagan. Don't care for him personally, but he played a role in my lifelong enjoyment of space exploration and to an extent, futurism.

Bill said...

I agree about his positive role overall.

I wasn't attacking him for being atheist. I'm not even certain he was, just that's what I got from him.

He founded the Planetary Society, which has done good work over the years. I used to support them until they ran a column in their magazine going after "climate deniers" and refused to correspond with me about the issue. That was it. Sagan acolyte Neil Tyson is an full blown climate alarmist.

It is a shame when science is politicized.

Ed said...

Right you are Bill. I was very excited about the "Cosmos" revival but Tyson's climate preachiness in every show ruined it for me.

Bill said...

He seems to have no sense of self awareness. Many episodes featured a brave scientist who challenged the prevailing "truth" of the day, frequently at great personal cost. Yet, no "truth of the day" is more rigidly enforced than human caused catastrophic climate change.