Out Of The Blue, And Into The Black
William Shatner Finds Space Flight Very Different From Capt. Kirk's Experience
Also on today’s menu:
Crossing The Line
Counting On Offshore Wind
It was not like flying the USS Enterprise for William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series. The 90-year-old actor got a free space flight on the New Shepherd NS-18 space capsule, named for New Hampshire’s Alan Shepherd.
Back on earth, a stunned Shatner declared, “Everybody in the world needs to do this. That’s the thing — the covering of blue. This sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue. We think, ‘Oh, it’s blue sky,’ and then suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden like you whip off a sheet, and you’re looking into blackness. … There is mother of Earth and comfort, and there’s — is there death? I don’t know. Is that the way death is? Whoa, and it’s gone. Geez. It was so moving.”
He added, “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than me and life.”
Crossing The Line
Governor Chris Sununu expressed disappointment that the Republicans on the Executive Council voted down $27 million in federal funds that would have helped in the state’s effort to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and he said the nine people arrested for disrupting the Executive Council meeting showed that the line of civility has moved in the state as people debate vaccine mandates.
“Our state response really depends on this money,” Sununu said, calling the 4-1 partisan vote “a disservice of all who we are elected to serve.” He said those Republican councilors “sent our tax dollars back” due to “conspiracy theories” and “mass false information” by those who opposed the contracts.
He noted that the state has accepted billions of federal dollars with similar stipulations, which opponents claimed would challenge state sovereignty.
Counting On Offshore Wind
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has announced plans to auction offshore wind leases to developers for up to seven new areas by 2025, including waters in the Gulf of Maine, Gulf of Mexico, Central Atlantic, New York Bight (between Long Island and New Jersey), and off the coasts of Oregon, California, and the Carolinas.
New Hampshire has been looking at the possibility of offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine to determine its benefits and costs. The impact of an offshore wind farm on marine life has been a continuing topic of concern to fishermen who already are coping with climate change, evolving federal regulations, and a pandemic that has disrupted their industry.
Mark Sanborn, assistant commissioner of the Department of Environmental Services, said, “If we ever move forward with offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine, there will be a representative of the commercial fishermen from the New Hampshire side, I promise you.”
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