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Well, it's not a suicide mission, exactly. Just very dangerous with high chance of death. Lots of test pilots from that period would take those chances. I just had an interesting discussion with my daughter about this – she asked if I would go to space if it meant not returning. My first answer is 'no', though "if I had" a terminal condition and was down to my last year, I might. But then who would want to send a guy in late stages of cancer, for example?
Reminds me a scifi short story I read years and years ago about a guy who illegally transports a dying man to the moon and leaves him there to die. The man is the guy who made space exploration possible, but whose health was too poor to send him in space. Anyone remember a story like that? (Couldn't find it after 5 furious minutes googling).
briandmyers · 4564 days ago · link ·
Sounds like this (Requiem by Robert Heinlein) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28short_story%29
Love this poem from that story : Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will!
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
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thenewgreen · 4564 days ago · link ·
Beautiful poem and the story by Heinlein sounds really interesting. Have you read it and would you recommend? Great work digging that up.
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briandmyers · 4564 days ago · link ·
Read it many years ago. All Heinlein is worth a read. The poem (also 'Requiem') is by Robert Louis Stevenson, and it is the epitaph on his grave in Samoa, where he lived the final days of his life.
thenewgreen · 4565 days ago · link ·
Let me know if you find the story, it sounds like an interesting premise.