A sea gull (here a lake gull) just glided past our windows and a few minutes ago I was looking at a photograph of the Sea Gull Nebula in FAR OUT.

        I am 2,000 light years from Earth in FAR OUT.  This is a book for daylight with colors that shouldn’t be altered by artificial light.

        Generally I enjoy a chapter a day.  This is almost a spiritual experience.  We know the universe is immense; but to be reminded of this--to consider immensity really beyond comprehension--on a daily basis is remarkable and unexpectedly calming.

        My earliest ambition was to be the first man on the moon.  This goes back to about 1950, when I was eight and nine years old; long before any country had a space program.

        When I started needing eyeglasses, I realized that it wasn’t going to happen, and my thoughts turned to the sea.  Later I learned that even if my eyes hadn’t been bad, I was simply too tall.  6’ 1” wouldn’t fit in the early space capsules. 

        Still, while there have been inefficiencies and egregious blunders, the space program is one of the few things for which I would gladly pay more taxes.  I realize that the United States cannot continue indefinitely to run an outlandish deficit and that most Federal spending is in programs that can’t be reduced; nevertheless I regret President Obama’s decision effectively to end the American program for manned space exploration.

        Those who claim that sending machines is enough have never been on a voyage of exploration themselves.  If a robot had sailed EGREGIOUS or CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, it would have said something about the nature of man, but not whatever was said by my having been aboard.

        There will be another man on the moon.  There will be a man on Mars.  But he will not likely be an American.  If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Chinese.

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        Tim Robinson has just posted two amazing recent photographs of his neighbor, the U.S.S. CONSTITUTION.  Her topmasts are lowered for the winter.  Clicking on the photographs will make them larger and even more impressive.