Oye backers,
When a peer supports you, it is one of the best feelings in the world. Now, my friend physicist Robert Freeland is one of those professional peers for whom I have the highest professional admiration and with whom I "occasionally" see eye-to-eye.
[pictured: That's Rob in the middle, sitting at my left. NASA engineer Rob Adam's hosted this group, some of the core members of Icarus Interstellar, at his home in Huntsville, AL, for last year's Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. Yes, my glasses are upside down.]
So today when I received the "You've got money!" notification with Rob's name listed, first I did a double-take. Then I gasped. Then I cheered.
...then, I lowered my head, shut my eyes and gave a quiet word of thanks—for friends and allies and supporters like Rob. Even though we argue, we agree: The value of space exploration for our future is bigger than any one (or two) of us.
Of all the backers of our crowdfunding campaign for The Astronaut Instruction Manual for Pre-Teens, Rob Freeland's comes along with a feeling of gratitude and appreciation that make me feel like we are taking on the world with our audacious goals and space science endeavors, and that by our doing it together we are making headway.
That's it. Keep up the good work, we are making headway:
One amazing backer at a time,
MM
But I’ve yet to find a way to truly work on the idea. If I wrote a book about my journey to this realization, do you think you’d likely read it?
Many works of science fiction explore the idea of us finding a vast and advanced alien archive someday; but what if that archive were ours, and filled with the fruits of Earth’s biodiversity and cultural depth, up to this precarious moment in time?
Leave a note, question, or thought, and feel free to +Follow the project to support the possibility of this book, my life’s best dream.