| Background: In 1973, I submitted a suggestion regarding space colonization to International Harvester, the successor company to the McCormick Reaper Co. I also made the same suggestion to Amoco, which is now part of BP. At that approximate time period, International Harvester was being run by Mr. Brooks McCormick. And a Nancy McCormick later worked for the Cincinnati radio station that was satirized, along with the Taft family and me, in the series WKRP in Cincinnati. That series began in 1978.
Nancy was killed in in a helicopter crash; I believe that was in 1986. I don't know, actually, when her employment began at WKRC, the Taft station that was made fun of in the series. The reader is probably not familiar with this history of how the series began, but various factors have combined to keep the story out of the popular media. However, it should be rather obvious that a CBS series called "WKRP in Cincinnati" would intend making fun of an ABC Cincinnati station, given that said ABC station had call letters of "WKRC." Now, space colonization may unfortunately seem like science fiction to many readers. And this particular article isn’t really about that subject. I’ll sketch it briefly, though, and readers who consider it irrelevant may want to skim the next few paragraphs. The idea of space colonization played an important part in resolving the Cold War, the most dangerous war in the history of the human species. By 1987, to cite one episode of the Space Race, the Soviets, had been goaded to try to outdo the American space colonization ideas, specifically to outdo the ideas of Dr. Peter Glaser. So that year they launched their advanced Energia booster. It was the last great Soviet scientific achievement and was reported on the front page of the New York Times. I played a minor role in those events. My role is described more fully in some of my other writing, and I received a letter from Dr. Glaser expressing thanks. The interest which the media had developed in me had helped garner publicity for his work. Today, space colonization offers two attractions: (1) aerospace competition can provide a sublimated, non-violent substitute for war which specifically involves missiles. History shows that this works. But, while Soviet ICBMs no longer seemed as much of a threat in 2007 as they had during the Cold War, missiles from Iran and North Korea were an increased concern. (2) Glaser’s proposal for energy from satellite solar power (SSP) may well turn out to be the only long-range solution for global warming. There are also hydrogen deposits on the moon which could be important for nuclear fussion. Continue this article |