The cultural mandate and the final frontier

“Space,” proclaimed the memorable opening to the original Star Trek series, is “the final frontier.” The image of the frontier, and its historic importance to Americans especially, has been part of our national discourse since at least historian Frederick J. Continue Reading...

Mars needs religion!

… Or does religion need Mars? So argues social commentator James Poulos at Foreign Affairs: What’s clear is that Earth no longer invites us to contemplate, much less renew, our deepest spiritual needs. Continue Reading...

The Call of the Martian

I saw The Martian this week and was struck by the number of resonant themes on a variety of is issues, including creation, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, exploration, work, suffering, risk, and civilization. Continue Reading...

Would Kuyper go to Mars?

In his otherwise excellent work The Problem of Poverty, the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, as a man of his time (the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), commended the merits of colonialism as if there were not already people in other lands with their own calling to “till the earth” that God had made. Continue Reading...

Climate change nightmare!

…on Mars: Global warming could be heating Mars four times faster than Earth due to a mutually reinforcing interplay of wind-swept dust and changes in reflected heat from the Sun, according to a study released Wednesday. Continue Reading...