ASTRO-GYMNASTICS
Do-it-yourself grook

Go on a starlit night,
 stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
 outwards into space,
and let the starry
 firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
 your elected base.

Feel Earth's colossal weight
 of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
 water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
 this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
 your strangely solid head.

Piet Hein


Tusen juleljus i skyn ar inte tillrackligt i juletid. Nu tander vi
vara egna.

This is the universe. I work here.
Buzz Lightyear


We have just reached the outer fringes of the Solar System. Can any sane man possibly argue that we should stop there? ---Hugh
Maclennan

"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." 
-Stephen Hawking

"No. We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten
different scientists about the environment, population control,
genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing
every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a
hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our
Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take
us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy
Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing
unless we go to the stars."
      Sinclair, Infection (Babylon 5)


We who came down from out of the forest seek to grow a forest of
knowing among the stars." - Ferris, Timothy in 'The Mind's Sky: Human
Intelligence in a Cosmic Context' 1992


The expansion of life over the unverse is a beginning, not an end.  At
the same time as life is extending its habitat quantitatively, it will
also be changing and evolving qualitatively into new dimensions of
mind and spirit that we cannot imagine.  The acquistion of new
territory is important, not as an end in itself, but as a means to
enable life to experiment with intelligence in a million forms.'
Freeman Dyson

Our Festival of Kites,
in the strong March winds
 of Jupiter
 -- Tom Brinck. 

Ad Astra per Ardua --- To the Stars by Our Own Hands
Huntsville Alabama L5 Society

The more I study this Gaia that I am embedded within
(Gaia being the biolayer, not the planet, which is Terra) the more
my relationship to Gaia becomes a love-hate one.She's Mom, all
right... no question about that, and I do pay my props to Mama G...
but I really think it's time for me to get out of the house before
her odd habits and idiosyncrasies start driving me crazy.
Eric Watt Forste <arkuat@pobox.com>

I want to go to the moon and my friends, they all laugh.
My teachers think I'm a little odd, but they don't know the half.
'Cause I see space colonies in the sky
And asteroid miners flying by;
Power stations 'round the Sun
Now the Dyson Sphere's begun;
And a First Contact I see. . .
Dreamer's Song by John and Steve Macdonald 

I don't hold with messing with gravity wells, it's just more room for 
error.
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix

Gravity will be an option. 
Timothy Leary

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program"
 -Larry Niven

Doroga k Zvjozdam Obkrta
The way to the stars is open 
at Baikonour

Defenders of nature, and defenders of industry, unite in outer
space. Become cosmic nomads, the hunters of comets and gatherers of
asteroids. Spin cocoons of steel for your new forests and seas. And
when you visit the Earth, step lightly, lest you destroy its fragile
beauty. Andrew Nowicki


"The sky isn't right down there, Maria," he said. "It changes colors,
black to blue or red or something, and you can only see the stars
part of the time, and they don't shine, they're all distorted. They twinkle.
We won't have access to freefall when we want it, we'll be stuck in full 
gravity all the time. We couldn't keep clean - there'll be *dirt* everywhere. 
They'll make us grow plants in the mud to eat."
Ubu Roy, _Angel Station_ by Walter John Williams

100-square-mile 
Sail billows....Hydrogen breathes us 
Toward Infinity 
Michael R. Collings 

. . .our expansion into the universe is not just an expansion of men and machines. It is an expansion
of all life, making use of man's brain for her own purposes. --Freeman Dyson

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
-- John Gillespie Magee 


"Spacekind of the Earth Unite! You have nothing to lose but your gravity!"
- Dale Amon


If not us -- who??? If not now -- when??? Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. 


Spirited away 
Upon Wings of Transcendence 
The Stars are our home 

Greg Bower
Email:majortom@netzone.com


 more than a planet
 does teraforming
 form
Todd Hoff