INVASION OF SPACE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 649, 7 December 1951, Page 7

INVASION OF SPACE

Sir,-I possess pictures 6f a rocket designed for inter-planetary travel and of a design for a space-station. I have just received a report of the International Congress on Astronautics held recently in London, wherein is a plan for landing 50 men on Mars, using space-stations as stepping stones; the expedition to last some three years. «Your admirable editorial directs attention to a number of cogent points bearing on these ambitious schemes and emboldens me to suggest that the pros-

pect before the human race would be considerably brighter if, ali nations consenting, the United Nations decreed a 25 or 50-year scientific holiday. This interval could be used for bringing our moral and spiritual development to a point where we might become trustworthy custodians of what we have already discoyered-time enough then to carry our disruptive tendencies amongst the celestial spheres. As you point. out, it would be better for us "to stay rooted in our own small world, at least until we have learnt to live in it peacefully." _: We need to become less dominated _ by our mania for destruction; less like irresponsible schoolboys fooling about in an explosives factory; less of apes and tigers and more nearly something that would offer at least some colourable justification for Hamlet’s encomium beginning: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!" ,

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).