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And meanwhile, those of us still alive live in a time of miracles and wonder (as I've said before).

"Ring shadows line the face of distant Saturn, providing a backdrop for the brilliant, white sphere of the icy moon Enceladus. The image was taken by the orbiting Cassini spacecraft on June 28, 2007, at a distance of approximately 291,000 kilometers (181,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel."

The Atlantic has posted a stunning series of photographs from NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons, in particular, the "snowball" with what is almost certainly a liquid water ocean in its interior.

The pictures may have been taken by a machine more than one billion kilometres away from Earth, but to me they have the beauty of great art. I highly recommend you take some time to inhale those miracles of technology and human imagination. As has been said by others, sometimes I too love living in the future.

Crossposts: http://ed-rex.livejournal.com/503086.html

Being first is no guarantee that you'll still be around at the finish line.

While the U.S. is apparently giving up on returning to the moon any time soon, India is planning to send its first astronaut into orbit in 2016, while China is talking about doing it next year.

In the abstract, I don't give a damn who gets a critical mass of human beings outside of the bull's eye we laughingly call Planet Earth, but I have recently discovered in my bigoted heart of hearts, that I'd hoped it would be the West — preferably English-speaking — that managed it first.

Methinks it's time for Young Geoffrey to lose the parochialism.