I mean that at least 80% of the Russian people feel destitute. It's the people who had their past and future taken from them - they don't get paid - many of them face a wall. They have nowhere to go.
Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape. By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.
My work is as an ethnographic rescuer: a conduit between past and future generations. The urgency of this effort cannot be overstated.
People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.
A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.
Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.
