I am thrilled to pass on some good news from a fellow sci-fi reader who is keeping up on things better than I. Now, I do think our states want us to stay earth bound and hope that private efforts to settle the solar system will give men a chance to break away from the Old World more cleanly than did our ancestors. Thanks, Benson, for this.
I noticed recently that you decried a lack of interest in space exploration or colonization.
I am curious what % of any era were actually enthused about exploring beyond the horizon, and I don't think the middling masses ever needed to be very interested for the powerful at the time to make it happen.
And, so, just in case you were not aware, there are several current oligarchs with significant interest and investment in off planet colonization and Mars is being taken very seriously. There is quite a following and enough money chasing 'business' that there is at least one newsletter etc.
Elon Musk's SpaceX
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin
Curtis Iwata/Space Frontier Foundation email newsletter
mars-one.com
etc
Yes, you are choosing to live and report to the rest of us from the middle of a festering boil that is but a symptom of much larger trends.
And yes, from the decay will come new life. I particularly appreciate the idea that I believe I first was reminded of in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy - that many of the ideals that became the meta-myths of the North American empire had existed in Europe previously but had no where to grow until they were seized upon as useful rhetoric by and for the North American oligarchs of the 18th Century.
I believe the colonization of Mars will similarly lead to further flowering of humanity, in some way few of us will glimpse.
Also thank you for the 'How Far' video on arrow penetration. I returned to my Boy Scout past time this past year and have been hoping I could get good enough to hunt. Excellent to hear that most shots are likely to be well under 20 yards. With a 50# recurve I routinely hit an 8" kill zone at that distance. Next step is to lose my front sight and allow my natural male spatial sense to wake up and map the 'both eyes and the body' aiming techniques Lars so capably demonstrates.
Stay alert out there.
I don't think we're going to colonize Mars or anywhere else unless we develop the ability to create wormholes: a tunnel through space-time allowing us to travel great distances instantaneously. If we developed this ability, we still wouldn't colonize Mars because it lacks an ionosphere because its molten core cooled long ago.
CS Lewis' "Perelandra" explores Christian motifs on another planet created with intelligent life. Man tried to do on Perelandra what it did on Earth.
I think we should work on making a life in the uninhabitable parts of Earth before we take to space. Indeed, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are only interested in it as a means of selling products wirelessly or selling the means to. Satellites are going to be used to deliver broadband to everyone everywhere.