The Loveliest Planet

One of the current states of the world is that it just ended (we hope) millions of years of raw evolution and thousands of years of difficult construction, almost all of which was completely new. Now, people from the loveliest planet have reached the Moon and increasing numbers of people routinely view the Earth from orbital space.

Bringing living witnesses back from orbit is such an important activity that the whole emphasis of space flight should turn to that as a worldwide goal for the foreseeable future. It will probably never become unpopular.

Every nation should have had an opportunity to send one or two of their country to Earth orbit. Probably that should include both men and women.

The orbital space program should be expanded, if necessary by construction of a second station which can accommodate visitors for a few days. Visitors would have appropriate training of course. At least one visitor to the International Space Station is said to have required almost no training.

Constructing such a station expressly for visits by persons, without an extensive outlay for research, will be important. An appropriate module would be a conference room. At one time, flying in an orbiting space station was only a dream, and was vaguely understood as being at once a privilege, a statement of the importance of that person, a pleasure, an honor and a thrill. By now it is becoming understood as a valuable necessity for the Earth which should provide first hand understanding of the world for as many people as possible,

Manned space flight by tourists, professional persons, officers, government officials, businessmen, lawyers, writers, clergymen, doctors, engineers, farmers, and other persons in as many different fields as possible should be made a priority goal for every industrial market nation that can afford to participate. Those nations which are on the verge of attaining that kind of economic prosperity should be given the understanding that their own participation will be welcome and important.

Nations in stages of development that preclude their own space flight program should be given flights for selected persons from their own countries - and who speak their country's native language. Of course, the procedures for selecting visitors to the space stations are extraordinarily important and it is beyond this writer to know.

A long-term project to ensure that eventually hundreds or thousands of actual living witnesses to the Earth's existence from orbit walk the Earth, is a good, timely project appropriate at this time, and will be welcome throughout the world.

This emerges from considering a least-action path for Earth from the zero sum predation of raw primitive evolution to a state of civil planet-hood, just government, and laws made by human beings.