[ExI] An Elegy for the Age of Space

[BillK]

Sad piece, lamenting the end of Mankind's leap into space.

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
An Elegy for the Age of Space
The orbiters are silent now, waiting for the last awkward journey that
will take them to the museums that will warehouse the grandest of our
civilization’s failed dreams. There will be no countdown, no pillar of
flame to punch them through the atmosphere and send them whipping
around the planet at orbital speeds. All of that is over.

<http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/08/elegy-for-age-of-space.html>

That’s the second reason that the space age is ending, not just for us
but for humanity. In the final analysis, space travel was simply the
furthest and most characteristic offshoot of industrial civilization,
and depended—as all of industrial civilization depends—on vast
quantities of cheap, highly concentrated, readily accessible energy.
That basic condition is coming to an end around us right now.
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So, it basically comes down to the fact that unless a new source of
cheap, concentrated energy becomes available, our civilization has to
drastically scale back the dreams of the future.


BillK