Although I intend for TIAW to be weekly, and had a lot of fun with the inaugural edition, this entry is several weeks after the first.  A health issue has forced me to radically decaffeinate from a six-cup coffee habit, so even though I'm adjusting well enough the new equilibrium is much less energetic.  However, I doubt it will affect future entries.  

The community suffered several losses this week, not least the loss of innocence.  For many supporters of Newspace, it is indeed just a hobby--something interesting to read about, "cool" to watch, and fun to discuss when there are no football games on.  Those people are now wringing their hands about what a cruel universe it is, and attacking those of us who've dared to honor the Scaled people as anything more than hapless victims of circumstance.  I understand their perspective, but it disgusts me nonetheless.  

People who call those in the accident heroes are not being cynical, they are telling the simple truth, and it wasn't the catastrophe that made it so--they were heroes before, and the price they paid only brought attention to that fact.  Soldiers are glorified for nothing more than obeying orders to kill, but these people are working toward an infinite future.  If that doesn't make them heroes, then no such thing exists.

What does it mean to call one's self "progressive"?  To say you believe that things can be better merely dodges the question, as everyone pursues what they see as progress.  As I see it, the only real distinction is this: Humanity is an end in itself for the progressive, and we define its flaws only as that which promotes self-destruction or limits potential.  Virtue, therefore, is that which promotes beneficial growth and expands potential, and that is where space enters the picture.

We live in a world of increasing limits, where the best are occupied warning of what must not be done, and the worst are busy doing it anyway.  The dreamers and visionaries have lost ground to the guardians, ambition to caution, and hope to anxiety, tying up our creativity in the cause of avoiding disaster and limiting damage.  This is not the way of progress: Health comes from exercise, not hypochondria.  

But there is a positive vision, and it resonates.  A future where the human sphere has grown beyond its own comprehension, and diversifies and expands faster than any possibility of limit.  We dream of a story that will never end, and a human spirit that can never be contained; of a frontier that just keeps going, and a universe where the resources are as inexhaustible as the surprises.  And as with all journeys, it begins with a single step.  There is a way.