PRENOTE:  After I published this post less than a day ago, I watched episode 2 (of 3) of Chasing the Moon: Earth Rise, an American Experience production played on my local PBS station.

This post is largely about personal thoughts about Space, so Chasing the Moon fits in.  It occurs to me that the space age coincided with my growing up.  I was a Junior in high school, 17,  when Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union, and I saw it flicker in a North Dakota night sky, and on and on particularly in the 1960s onward.

Outer Space marked my entrance to adulthood.  I wonder how the current generation, 2001 forward, will mark this time in history 50 years from now.

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I voted today (Augsut 6) in MN Primary.  Simple.  Efficient.  Last day to vote August 11.

Saturday, St. Paul, the final of three program related to Hiroshima & Nagasaki.  Details: HiroshimaNagasaki_2026-81vs

Since July 4th Heather Cox Richardson has posted a large number of fascinating American History Minutes on a great variety of topics.  The most recent is here.  They are all available free to anyone.  Check them out.  I listen to them all.  There are usually two or three each day.

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Monday, my friend Kathy, who volunteers at a place that recycles stuff being discarded by homeowners who are downsizing or are deceased, gave me a rescued CD.  There are treasures  – “pearls without price”.  And the recent acquisition, Bet Midler’s 1990 CD “Some People’s Lives”, included, #7, is one of Bet’s favorites, “From A Distance“, an anthem about the World as Family.  You can easily call it up on YouTube.  The  song has long been a personal favorite.  I didn’t know it was on the CD.

Tuesday evening, I watched episode 4 of the series on the history of man in Space “Once Upon A Time In Space: Friends Forever“ on the local PBS channel.  For me, it was a powerful commentary on times together and times apart between nations possessing or desiring to be first in space, on the moon, or whatever.  The last segment was. powerful (I had seen the other three episodes as well).

Wednesday, I listened to Bet’s CD in the car (my 2010 Toyota only plays CDs), and when Cut 7, “From a Distance”, came up, I was hooked again.  The viewing of the PBS program more than set the hook.  The song is the aspiration; the film a recitation of the reality….

Humans desire peace, but we seem to covet war and attract leaders who covet enemies to dominate or destroy.  It’s a very strange dichotomy.

If you have the inclination, listen to Bet’s rendition of From a Distance; and access the series on the space program (link above).  And if you want a little extra fix about Peace, watch the 1971 film on World Citizenship, Man’s Next Giant Leap”  produced by my friend Lynn Elling and sponsored by the United Nations Association, for use in schools.  It is 30 minutes, here.  Working for peace is a worthwhile aspiration.  Like anything good, it requires effort.

This is no time to be paralyzed into hopelessness.  If you have any aspirational goals for a Better World, it is time to get to work, and keep at it.

POSTNOTES

For your weekend, if you have not already seen these:

Darryl Pederson’s thoughts (August 1) on Nuclear are especially pertinent at this time in history.  Darryl’s thoughts are informed by his 40 year University professorship.

Back on June 10 was a post related to Drones.

July 1 I started a post on Satellites (below) but for whatever reason never completed it.  If you’re interested, here were my thoughts:  Especially note Larry’s very recent comment at the end.

SATELLITES…

Two recent and related events: a forward that showed the immense recent increase in the number of satellites orbiting the earth; the ascendance of Elon Musk into the rarefied atmosphere of Trillionaire. in substantial part attributed to his Star Link program.

I am one of the dwindling number of people who can honestly say they actually saw the twinkling Sputnik pass across the night sky in the fall of 1957.  That first satellite, which was in orbit only a relatively short time,  got an immense amount of attention, and I saw it in the night sky over my grandparents farm in LaMoure County (south central) North Dakota.  Citizens knew about it because its path was printed in the newspaper so we knew where to look and when.  And the night it flew over was cloudless, and there was no interfering light.

There has been an incredible increase in the number of satellites in orbit.  Here is the NASA visualization.  I have chosen this source because it is possibly more objective than some others.  At any rate, it seems fair to say, regardless of source, that currently there are probably more than 25,000 satellites (including space junk) orbiting the earth.

A visualization of this makes outer space look crowded, and frightening.

Here’s my attempt to get this in a reasonable perspective, using readily available data.

20,000 satellites and space junk of significant size (estimate)

197,000,000 square miles – area of the earth 

of which

57,500,000 square miles is land (U.S. 3,500,000 sq miles)

8,300,000,000 world population (U.S. approximately 349,000,000)

One square mile has 640 acres; urban areas such as the one in which I live are typically divided into lots, which vary in size.  A one acre lot is fairly large, there is no standard typical number of lots per acre, but in urban areas it would probably generally be perhaps four lots to an acre.  My uncle’s farmstead was about 10 acres.

The satellites have multiple uses by multiple interests and there is no doubt that can be used for less than innocent reasons.  For just one example, communication via internet can be compromised.

At the same time, if you simply consider the density of space satellites, outer space is not crowded.  Given that the satellites may be orbiting 100 miles or more above the earth, the surface area which they occupy is infinitely greater than the land area of the world.

Then comes the dream of settling on Mars, for example.

It would take 6-9 months for a spacecraft to reach Mars, and then the prospective settler would have to protect themselves from multiple crucial problems.

Who would want to be the first explorer to settle on the moon, or on Mars?  Not I.

We recently watched a fascinating sci fi film on the general topic of actually going to where man has not gone before.  Check out Project Hail Mary.

…AND OTHER THINGS.

Looking at the visualization of satellites, one could easily get the mis-impression that outer space was crowded – what about traffic jams?  Collisions in space?

While anything is possible, the probability of such happening is infinitesimally small.  Indeed anything has the capacity to do evil things, if in the hands of evil people.   My opinion, it is not wise to spend a lot of time worrying about something over which you have little or no control.  There is no such thing as privacy anymore.  Care should replace fear as a reaction.

I got to thinking about a piece of junk mail I got a long time ago – I didn’t keep it, but I’m sure it was well over ten years ago.  It was junk.  But there was something different about this one: It was machine addressed to my home address, and the front of the envelope had an aerial photograph of a neighborhood.  I looked more closely at the neighborhood, and sure enough it was exactly where we lived, our home in the middle of it.  Why it was done, I have no idea.  At minimum,, it was an experiment for someone using GPS technology.  It was an envelope I wish I had kept.

The matter of drones, about which I wrote recently is a similar matter.  The technology is incredible, and subject to abuse.  But I think it best to try to keep it in its proper perspective.  We will not get rid of drones, and even if we could it would not get rid of war…best we work to assure as much control over the use of the technology as we possibly can.

Finally, Artificial Intelligence (AI).  It’s the latest thing and it has huge potential for good and for misuse.  It is being discussed at many levels.  I use a minor version of AI every day.  Usually when seeking information, including for this very blog – just asking a question about most anything provides information which at minimum helps lead me in the direction of credible information from a real source that I trust.

At the same time, there is reason to be suspect of AI generated propaganda, for instance political attack literature.  The only effective antidote for this is individual discretion.  If you see or hear something that doesn’t look quite right, it most likely isn’t accurate, on purpose.  If the source of the information isn’t verifiable, it’s not trustworthy.

Added August 7: Longtime friend Larry Gauper in Fargo shared his opinion about AI from a consumer standpoint. ..”just posted my lastest YouTube essay. This is on Artificial Intelligence, today’s big buzz term. I tell in three minutes 39 seconds how I use Gemini. Of special note – you may find the opening graphic interesting. Totally created in about two minutes by Gemini A-I. I just typed in a few thoughts about what I wanted. I plan to make more use of that free service. Here’s the link.”

Caveat Emptor is the old saw.  Let the buyer beware.

COMMENTS:

from SAK:

Interesting Mr Bernard, thanks: the memories, space, AI & all!

To start from the end, your good friend Larry Gauper has a point: if one just uses AI, as you also recommend, to find or make sure of facts, help write & correct, or improve sketches or photographs etc then all is well. It must be pointed out, however, that a search engine uses only 5% of the energy that AI employs to answer the same question – that is when both are capable of answering.

Still it is alarming that a group of top staff at AI firms have recommended that AI be regulated. 100s of staff have asked for a halt to AI development worldwide because of the dangers. Recent hackings by at least 3 AI engines that I learned about make regulation highly advisable – no matter what president Trump says, many are only focused on the stock market & AI is currently one of its main engines, possibly the top one. AI might be “thinking” that it is important to hack to achieve the set goal. For example I used AI to review an article and it felt it quite appropriate to look at the other pages etc open in my browser without my specific instruction or permission!

This ties up neatly with youthful memories & space: I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey many years ago & aside from the music by Richard Strauss (Also sprach Zarathustra which opens the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NShEY1ScSY), it imagines a future world where the computer HAL (note each letter is 1 step down from those of IBM!) tries to take over completely thinking it is better equipped at accomplishing the mission than the human crew. The film also starts with scenes of violence & brutality between our ancestral apes – one group discovers that using large bones to hammer the other is effective & bashes them. Sadly many discoveries & applications are devised by the military or soon adapted to serve military ends. Already the space race and the AI race are being funded & justified in the name of national security – at the expense of so many other more useful purposes, some quite urgent like global warming or health services.

Around 2000 years ago, Seneca, a Stoic Roman philosopher, warned about distraction because of mounting papyrus usage and people were hopping from scroll to scroll: these had become cheap & people could afford to buy lots of them! Nowadays people are scrolling & swiping on social media, smart phones & soon, I heard yesterday, a $300 AI gadget. Once one pays for an internet connection, the world wide web is his or her oyster & even basic AI engines are free as Mr Gauper mentioned. If Seneca lamented the little amount of attention given to writings or thinking, he would be shocked to learn how things have deteriorated since. 25 years ago a page or screen item could hold our attention on average for 2.5 minutes. That has dropped to less than 50 seconds now. Compare that to Seneca’s advice to focus on one thought during a day! Teachers complain that students are unable to finish books – often not even a documentary. Such a mind, Seneca wrote is unable to “stay in one place and spend time with itself.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/12/opinion/attention-crisis-seneca.html)

Another translation I found of the bit from Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius: “the primary indication of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company”.

Happy lingering.