I never had the good fortune of meeting Sir Arthur C. Clarke, so I don't have all that much to add to the notes already posted by Peter and others. But I have of course read some of his work, and he was Chancellor of ISU at the time I graduated, so I have some connection to the man, and I share in the sadness so eloquently expressed elsewhere, as well as in the celebration of his work and his ideas that is rightfully occuring as a result of yesterday's sad news.

Sadly, death has been in my mind too much lately--I was at a funeral for one grandparent last weekend, and will be at a memorial service for another two weekends from now. But as a consequence, I've learned that each moment of sadness like this can serve as a reminder or an encouragement of something well worth doing. So, what can I and others in this community so strongly affected by Clarke's thoughts and writing take out of this?

I don't have a grander lesson for the community as a whole, but after thinking about it a while, something came to me, an idea I've often thought about but had forgotten or set aside.

Almost a year ago, a friend and fellow NASA Academy alum tried to recruit me to give a talk at a Science Fiction convention. Now, I haven't been a sci-fi geek since middle school, and I didn't go to conventions even back then, so at first, this idea was pretty strange to me. I'll admit that the first image that came to my mind was of spandex-clad Star Trek fanatics debating minutae of individual episodes or side plots (perhaps I am not the only one who pictures a science fiction convention thusly). But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

Afterall, what other industry can so directly thank the authors of speculative fiction for its progress and innovation? The early days of space exploration were marked by authors inventing important concepts (such as Clarke's own proposal of geostationary telecom platforms) and writing textbooks (e.g. Clarke's Interplanetary Flight, Asimov's various Physics textbooks), or industry luminaries crossing over to participate in fiction (e.g. Von Braun's Disney Collaborations). While I'm not an expert on contemporary science fiction, I know that there are still authors out there who make accurate and realistic engineering and science the basis for their novels. Why not go interact with them?

At the same time, why not make sure that those fans of science fiction so enthusiastic as to attend a convention know about the amazing things that are actually going on. The friend who first invited me to the conference works at NASA on the James Webb telescope; so she was going to give a presentation on that mission, with its massive set of mirrors, enormous sun shield, et cetera. Of course these SciFi fans are going to get excited about it!

I think that the X PRIZE Foundation in general and the Google Lunar X PRIZE Foundation in specific is something that can and should be talked about in these kind of places. I meant to attend that conferece back a year ago, but my travel schedule did not permit it. I haven't thought about it much since. So, that's my goal, my way to make something positive out of our collective loss. Thank you, Sir Arthur, for this last inspiration.