Remember that wooden “spaceship” I mentioned a few months ago? Well, it has almost completed its journey, and I’m happy to say that the astronauts survived without major conflict for the full trip. Of course, they knew in the back of their minds that it wasn’t the real thing, so the stress wasn’t as bad as it would be on a real one, but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

I’ve noticed, from stories that my father-in-law tells and from movies of the era, that people seem to have gotten less aggressive in the last sixty years. I’m sure that helps endeavors like this, since the pessimistic predictions of murder and mayhem during such long-term voyages seem to be hold-overs from the imaginings of the fifties and sixties. Probably a good idea to be pessimistic about such things, but it also feels pretty good to learn that we’re not entirely the savages that we thought we were.

I’ve got some ideas about the future of the human race, and the techniques and technologies that will enable us to advance far beyond what we think of as normal now. Oddly enough, most of those techniques and technologies already exist, there are only a few that I have identified as necessary but haven’t found yet. More on this later.