Thoughts on mortality and bicycling

[jhetley]

We all owe a death....

Yeah, that's the kind of thought you ponder while bicycling the highways of this great land.

But the glitches of yesterday's spaceflight, the Challenger and Columbia crashes, _any_ dangerous achievement, need to be balanced against that simple statement. Life is fatal. Nobody here gets out alive.

I'm closer to sixty than to fifty. My father died before he reached seventy, and the last few years of his life were hell from leukemia. What's ten years of life worth? Worth staying at home on the couch for fear that I might get knocked into a ditch by a pulp truck? Worth giving up manned space flight?

If somebody was crazy enough to offer me a one-way ticket to Mars, I'd give it serious thought.

15.3 miles, 1:02:50. Best time so far this year.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Excellent time! And yes, I agree on all the rest too.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Overall, the question of "what's a risk worth taking" is one which each person has to decide individually. I'd be hesitant about that one-way ticket to Mars... but that's because there's so much of my life here that I enjoy. If I had 6 months to live, and a chance to die off-planet, my response would be very different.

"I want to go dancing on the Moon,
I want to frolic in zero-gravity.
Hear Jupiter sing, tour Saturn's rings --
When will space be open for me?"
- Diana Gallagher