User Guide

A NEW SUN
APPENDIX 5
243
Two and a half years is a long time to work on a project, and many changes
have taken place in that time. Amanda Rusko-Berger, Coulby Riehl and Caleb
Reynolds were all born during the project. Susan Brookins, who kept us fed
and paid and made sure the Gatorade man filled up our machine every week,
is now Susan Meier (yes, that Meier). The FIRAXIS staff has grown to a whop-
ping 17, and we’ve got a pretty good view now from the top floor of the
Executive Plaza building in Hunt Valley. We’re a better team, a happier team,
and definitely a wiser team than we were when we started the project. The
nest is going to seem a little empty with Alpha Centauri gone, but fortunately
we’ve got two outstanding ideas in the works, and maybe even a few after
that, so it looks like we’ll stay busy for quite a while.
Before we close, we’d like to stop and briefly reflect on the deeper message
that Alpha Centauri hopes to convey. In the closing years of the twentieth
century, humanity stands capable of technological achievements which were
never possible in any previous era and which as far as we know may never have
been available to any sentient species, ever. The time of miracles is indeed
upon us, and yet the nuclear trigger remains armed, population growth con-
tinues to overwhelm available resources, our climate shows early signs of run-
ning amok, and sooner or later a near-Earth asteroid will probably wipe civi-
lization or even humanity itself from the face of the planet. As a basket in
which to keep all our eggs, Earth is more precarious than ever, yet we contin-
ue to dilly and dally and just this week Time magazine ran an article calling
the International Space Station “a white elephant” that is not worth the
money.
Are we content to stew in our collective juices, to turn inward as our planet
runs inexorably out of resources and wait for the Universe (or perhaps our
next-door neighbors) to grow tired of us and wipe us out? Or shall we claim
the planets and stars, distribute our eggs among many baskets, ensure the
long-term survival of our species, and in the process embark on the greatest
adventure of all time? Mars could be reached within our own lifetimes:
manned exploration missions, even colonies, all for a minute fraction of what
we spend every year building weapons. The planets lie nearly within reach of