NASA’s regards to Arthur C. Clarke

Alan Stern, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington released the following statement today in regards the passing of the famous science fiction author.

“Arthur Clarke was a gifted writer of science and science fiction, and an unparalleled visionary of the future, inspiring countless young people throughout the middle and later 20th century with his hopeful vision of how spaceflight would transform societies, economies, and humankind itself.

“Although his personal odyssey here on Earth is now over, his vision lives on through his writing; he will be sorely missed.”

via NASA

Want to see way back into the deep of space?

Why not build a giant radio telescope on the dark side of the moon?  That is exactly what MIT and NASA scientists are proposing.  The benefits of building said telescope, which could possibly cover up to two square kilometers of of lunar surface, is that the moon would act as a kind of shield from radio waves that are being created on Earth.  Read more about this proposed telescope in this Discovery News article.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps best know for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, passed away yesterday at age 90 in a hospital in Columbo, Sri Lanka.  The death of Clarke marks the passing of the last of what have often been referred to as the “Big Three” of science fiction, who also included Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.  A paper that Clarke wrote in 1945 for the journal “Wireless World” has widely been credited with leading to the development of communications satellites.

Arthur C. Clarke is one of my all time favorite authors.  I think the first book of his that I read was Childhood’s End, when I was in eighth grade.  Since then I’ve read many other Clarke novels, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous With Rama, almost all of his short stories (I own his entire short story collection), and several of his nonfiction essays and papers.  Clarke was lumped into what has been called Hard Science Fiction which pays particular attention to scientific details and ideas that could be plausible in the not too distant future. 

Two of my favorite Arthur C. Clarke quotes

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”