If you're not in London – or the thought of space hoppers serves only to deepen the misery – ActionAid is peddling some other tips gleaned from their poll.
"I can remember a paper from an Indian physics journal proving that no rocket could ever travel faster than the velocity of sound in the metal of which it was composed — complete nonsense, of course, which would put an end to any thought of space travel.
That's all there was to it, but there was an implied invasion, an implied resistance and a cast of aliens, even if you have never thought of Space Invaders in terms of narrative structure.
Dr. Howard E. McCurdy, a historian at American University in Washington who specializes in space issues, said that even decades ago, visionaries who thought of space stations also imagined reusable shuttle craft that would ferry crews and logistics between the outpost and the Earth.
While Newton thought of space and time as being absolute and unchanging entities, Einstein proposed that masses, such as those of a galaxy or the Sun, cause spacetime to warp, much as a person standing on a trampoline causes it to sag (Figure 1).
