I was reading a familiar-sounding dispatch from Trappist-1 the other day -- something about local planet-hopping, that long-standing cultural tradition so prevalent between the Inner Four that it's practically a birthright for most citizens. Given there's what, a 2- or 3-day distance at sub-speed travel between those tightly orbiting globes that it's normal to book a round-trip between all of them over three Earth-weeks and come home refreshed and renewed from all the sights.

You may have caught the NatGeo series Mars, a half fictional sci-fi yarn, half current documentary, unlike most anything we've seen before. Each episode advanced the futurific tale of the first crew flying to the red planet in 2033, determined to make a go of establishing its first permanent scientific colony. But what was so jarring at first, was the story getting regularly intercut with present-day interviews with the who's who of space travel development and opinion. One