NASA sækir innblástur til víkinga

Í Washington Post í morgun var grein um geimkönnunarprógrömm NASA og drauma um landnám á fjarlægum hnöttum. Greinarhöfundur og NASA virðast sjá geimferðaprógramm Bandaríkjanna sem beinan arftaka víkinganna. Þetta eru auðvitað góðar fréttir fyrir okkur Íslendinga, því það er ekki svo lélegt að NASA og geimáhugamenn ímyndi sér að Leifur Eiríksson sé forfaðir Captain Picard!

As Michael Griffin, the head of NASA, sees it, humanity is setting out on an interplanetary quest not dissimilar to what began with the Vikings. An age of space exploration has begun, but only with the same confused baby steps that brought Leif Eriksson briefly to Vinland and North America (or was it Greenland?).

"Fifty years into it, the amount of progress that the Vikings had made would not have been that noticeable, and that's where we are in space flight today," Griffin said in a recent interview. "I really think that's the way to look at it." [...]

It's an ambitious, almost Star Trek-like vision, one that has ardent supporters and vocal detractors.

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