My first love was a dog, and my second astronomy. My father’s role as the director of a government agency landed me the very special privilege of a behind-the-scenes look inside the Apollo 11 spacecraft (before its departure) and gave me the opportunity to have some exciting discussions with scientists at NASA’s Mission Control. By the age of ten, I was struggling with whether to be a priest or an astronomer when I grew up. My conversion nullified the former interest, but actually exacerbated the later as I found myself devouring the writings of creationist scientists and theologians. Especially beneficial for me in those days was the apologetic ministry of Dr. John Whitcomb, a presuppositionalist student of Van Til and co-author of the ground breaking book The Genesis Flood. Dr. Whitcomb’s lectures on space travel, the moon, and cosmology in general were thrilling. My passion for creation science grew and grew. From this passion bloomed two boyhood dreams: The first was to dig up dinosaurs. The second was to someday travel in a spacecraft and break the earth’s atmosphere to observe creation from the vantage point of space. God has been kind to grant me the first, and I do not in any way presume on the second. I am delighted, however, to see that consumer space travel will likely be a reality over the next decade.

CNN reports that, “Canada’s London, Ontario-based firm PlanetSpace unveiled designs for its Silver Dart spacecraft, an eight-person vehicle derived from experimental aircraft studies in the 1970s, Thursday with hopes of carrying fare-paying passengers into orbit and resupplying the international space station (ISS).”

P.S. Dr. Whitcomb is still spry, sharp as a tack, and inspirational at the age of eighty-four. He will be a key lecturer on the ancient world at the Vision Forum Ministries 2006 History of the World Mega-Conference in July.