Retirement grumbles
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RETIREMENT GRUMBLES
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s I write this, I have just returned from the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, and I find myself thinking about and eagerly waiting for the MRS Spring Meeting in Phoenix in April. Who will I meet there? What will I learn from attending? What new opportunities and connections will come about because of attendance? I don’t want to say that I’m impatient. I don’t want to, but I am. It is said that patience is a virtue. And maybe it is, under some circumstances. But I’ve never been very patient. I am a speedreader. I wait six months or more for new books from my favorite authors, only to read them quickly (often in less than a day), and then have to wait another six months or longer for the next book. Books in a series often end in cliffhangers, so I am left wondering for months what will happen to my favorite characters. The same is true for television shows and movies that I enjoy. It also applies to recurring events. To validate my sanity, I note that this sort of impatience does not occur with bill-paying or other odious activities. Additional grumbles are as follows. One of the biggest disappointments to me has been the slow pace of humankind’s space exploration programs. I’ve been a supporter of the space program, particularly humans in space, for decades. One of the reasons that I became a scientist was because of my fascination with the space programs of the early 1960s. Astronauts and cosmonauts who bravely participated in these efforts inspired many of us. I remember watching the first moon landing in 1969. At that point in the Apollo program, I assumed that travel to the moon would become routine, and by now, we would have huge space stations with dozens to hundreds of people on board each, colonies on the moon, and maybe even on Mars. The retreat from all of that has been painful to experience. It was during the early 1960s that I also began to be interested in science fiction. These novels also piqued my interest in the space program and humans in space. One of the first novels that I read was Red Planet.1 Of course, the fictional Mars planet in this Heinlein novel was significantly different from what we currently know of Mars. And yet, many of us are still intrigued by Mars and would like to see human exploration of and human colonies on Mars.2 There has been significant progress in materials and
technologies for space systems since those early days of space travel, but we still need better materials to enable long duration space travel by humans. I’m also impatient for better forms of air travel. I am a whiteknuckle flier. Nonetheless, I (like most of you) have experienced (suffered through) thousands of hours in the air, traveling for business or for pleasure. Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation.3 Intellectually, I’m aware of this fact. Nonetheless, time in the air usually includes moments of sheer terror as the plane is tossed around by atmospheric forces. Transoceanic flights and even coast-to-coast flights are lengthy and not the most comfortable of events, even
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