Realspace

In the 1960's we thought that the human exploration of space would soon reach Mars and elsewhere. But it didn't happen. Paul Levinson thinks that we have become too inward looking, tied to our web browsers, at the expense of travelling and seeing the universe. Personally I think that too many people are going backwards and forwards for no particular purpose and the online revolution has further to go. The trouble with this book is that it does nothing to deal with such arguments, rather it consists of vague generalities. While there are a few interesting points made in this book, like the idea that when the movement west had reached its limit in California, people had to find somewhere else to go. But if you want persuasive arguments then you should look elsewhere.

What Levinson totally fails to address is the cost of human space travel. The question isn't one of whether the names of astronomical objects are romantic enough, its one of what we do with the limited resources available. Levinson suggests that religion might inspire travel into space, but I would hope that religious leaders would be more concerned with the equitable distribution of wealth. Also there's a lot of science that can be done for the cost of a human mission to Mars, and this science might lead in 50 to 100 years to a way that people can really travel into space.