Ah yes. Barsoom and John Carter. I read that when I was 12. 1955. Even then, it was outdated, but I never saw the sky at night after that as just lights in the sky. It became a place of possible endless wonder.
Why would space be a place that Americans seem to long for? Really, what other people had a migration like the Oregon Trail? Between 1843 and 1890, somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 thousand Americans made that 3000 mile overland trip. It was very hard, with constant death at hand from weather, livestock, overturning wagons, and human hand. Yet, when you read the many journals written on trail, you read of the great wonder of the pioneers in the many things that they were seeing, that they had never even imagined before. Even when they were have major problems on the trail, they recorded the wonder of the land and inhabitants they met, animal and human. Perhaps it is in our genetics.
