the association of autonomous astronauts

perhaps all anyone needs to know about the association of autonomous astronauts can be derived from their motto:

The days of this society are numbered. Its reasons and its merits have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; its inhabitants are divided into two parties, one of which wants to build its own spaceships and leave this world behind.

that is awesome. do these people have a fan club? does that astronaut have, like, ten pocket protectors attached to his spacesuit?

i, too, am weary of this planet. unlike the aaa, however, i do not trust my own mathematical capabilities enough to build a personal spacepod, fold myself into its tiny interior, and launch the thing in the general direction of the moon, hoping to god that said moon is, in fact, made of cheese. something would go wrong and my cobbled-together space thing would explode, my little appendages flying everywhere. gruesome!

worse might be this cute little guy exploding in a fireball of mechanical ingenuity gone wrong:


is that mesh thing really supposed to protect space monkey extraordinaire? is he saluting, or attempting to escape his permeable suit of death?

the only other thing that the aaa seems to believe in is a trance/future they refer to as "dreamtime," which i'm pretty sure they could achieve with a lot less trouble by smoking some weed. being high is like forming an autonomous community in space where everyone is on the equivalent of an anti-depressant, yes? no?

but wait! a twist - an evil twist. the autonomous astronauts believe in the power and the (trancelike) majesty of disco. perhaps i cannot join them in their quest for trascendence after all. i have musical principles. they're possibly the only principles i still possess. is mighty monkey actually doing a disco move?

i need more information. . .

The sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: "What are we here for?" is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the riddle of the Ages has actually been out on the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!

are you blown away? i am blown away.

so is nasa. apparently, in 1997, they decided to launch "starshine," a 48cm ball covered with 900 highly-polished mirrors intended to reflect the sun's rays so as to be observable from the ground until burning up upon re-entering the atmosphere after eight months of shining on in space. this utterly useless but really attractive object was launched by the space shuttle discovery. linda ham, a nasa flight director, says: "essentially it’s a disco ball" (BBC Online News, 5 June 1999).

a new space race for the 21st century, i hope.