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Arthur C. Clarke - "The candles cost more than the cake"

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, in December 2007 saying "thank you and goodbye from Columbo Sri Lanka".

Would it be too much that we, the earthbound, do honor to this man, his intellect and his vision for the shared future of mankind by renaming the "International Space Station" as the "Arthur C. Clarke" Space Station?

It seems a small thing to do as a memorial to one man considering what his vision has done for us all.

( My favorite "Clarkian" bit of logic: "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying". I thought of that Clarke-like twist recently when I said that I would be much more impressed if life was not found on Mars than if it was. If life is found either existing now or at some time in the past, it would not surprise me at all, what would absolutely shock me is if there was absolutely no life on Mars now or at any time in the past. That fact and the implications would positively floor me, as I'm sure it would Sir Arthur. )

Posted @ March 18, 2008 09:49 PM | Current Affairs

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Comments

> renaming the "International Space Station" as the "Arthur C. Clarke" Space Station?

That dog? I think we should wait for something that actually serves Clarke's ideals better. Granted, he probably won't last that long, but remember what happened to the Shuttle Enterprise -- much the same thing as happened to the space program.

Posted by: Vootie at March 19, 2008 04:15 AM

I second Vootie. I was always disappointed that the Space Shuttle Enterprise was a test article, not a flight article.

Posted by: DJMoore at March 19, 2008 03:07 PM

My first thought, before I flipped to the comments page, was the same as Vootie's. Let honor Arthur with a higher-quality and more permanent station.

Posted by: tehag at March 20, 2008 05:07 AM

I think the first station named after Clarke should be the one that "just anyone" can nominally visit -- either through a bureaucratic position or a "reasonable" fee, i.e., something within a rational once-in-a-lifetime vacation expense of many people -- call it less than $25k in current dollars. Not something that requires massive pull to visit, or 10-15x the annual salary of highly paid individuals.

Posted by: Vootie at March 20, 2008 05:10 AM

I enjoy the space station for the challenge it gives the US 'Unionised and Tenured' educational system. The latest world competition math test put the US in 24th place behind the industrialised nations. We are in 15th place for K-12. We do educate a lot of Lawyers, boy do we educate more than our share of Lawyers. We also have an abnormal amount of Psychologists, Social workers and Politicians. Now if we can start graduating more Engineers and Scientists, things will start to happen again.

Posted by: Blogengeezer at March 20, 2008 09:05 PM

> We do educate a lot of Lawyers, boy do we educate more than our share of Lawyers.

You forgot the MBAs -- never forget them. They've been trained to *manage*. LOL

Posted by: Vootie at March 21, 2008 07:44 AM