Free Republic

When I wrote in this column three weeks ago that "the Somali pirates have hardly been cowed by the international naval presence" in the Gulf of Aden and "have simply shifted their operations to areas which they know are not being patrolled, with strikes increasing taking place on the high seas," little did I know how quickly events would confirm my analysis. On April 8, four pirates hijacked the Norfolk, Virginia-based MV Maersk Alabama, while the boat was some 240 nautical miles of the Somali coast en route to Mombasa, Kenya, with humanitarian supplies for Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda. Although...

I was in Mission Control when Neil Armstrong announced that the Eagle had landed. The applause was unexpectedly muted as we were all overwhelmed by the significance of the moment. Nobody had any doubt that Tranquility Base was the first step in an expansion into space that would drive human progress for centuries to come. We had of course all seen the 1968 Kubrick/Clarke movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the facilities depicted there seemed entirely reasonable. In our lifetimes, we expected to see hotels in orbit, translunar shuttles operated by commercial airlines, and settlements on the Moon. Only the...