"Go out beneath the stars on a clear winter night, and look up at the Milky Way spanning the heavens like a bridge of glowing mist. Up there, ranged beyond the other to the end of the Universe, suns without number burn in the loneliness of space. Down to the south hang the brilliant unwinking lanterns of other worlds - the electric blue of Jupiter, the glowing ember of Mars. Across the zenith, a meteor leaves a trail of fading incandescence, and a tiny voyager of space has come to a flaming end."

"Looking out across the immensity to the great suns and circling planets, to worlds of infinite mystery and promise, can you believe that man is to spend all his days cooped and crawling on the surface of this tiny Earth - this moist pebble with its clinging film of air? Or do you, on the other hand, believe that his destiny is indeed among the stars, and that one day our descendants will bridge the seas of space?"

--Arthur C. Clarke, "Interplanetary Flight" - British Interplanetary Society brochure (1938)

This is my first blog entry in Sonoran Desert Skies.