Vessels and Stations of Earthspace and The Belt

Essays on Technology, Civilization, and saving the world by Galaxy Science Fiction Science Editor Jerry Pournelle, PhD. Preface by Larry Niven, and Foreword by A. E. Van Vogt. From the Niven Preface: "Jerry Pournelle is our to make the whole world rich... He's been building the future since I was in grade school, and he's still at it." Essays include "Survival With Style" and "That Buck Rogers Stuff," as well as excerpts from The Strategy of Technology.

From the Preface to the 2011 Edition: “We live in an age of marvels. Despite that, we feel a sense of impending doom.... That's still true... We could still go to space. We could still mine the asteroids. We could still take part in developing mankind’s vast future. Indeed, it is easier to do now than it would have been when I wrote these essays. The unrelenting enmity of the Soviet Union has been replaced by other threats, some of them severe, but none comparable to 26,000 nuclear warheads. We have computers and the Internet. There is free exchange of ideas throughout most of the world, and the information revolution relentlessly expands that area. We still face the threat of famine, but it is not as acute as it was in the times when these essays were written. Communications, transportation, electronics, rocket technology – it’s all better now. We can still go to the planets.

We still live in an age of marvels, and it’s still true that the only limit to growth is nerve.