THE NEW STAR PARTY ECONOMIC SELF HELP

How to adapt your human cultures and values for the interstellar market.

SCOTTISH CULTURAL EXAMPLE 1  TARTAN

SCOTTISH CULTURAL EXAMPLE 2  GOLF

A GALAXY OF TARTAN

      ANDREW HENNESSEY

Here is an article that shows and hopefully proves how important human ideas and culture can be to the Galaxy at large.

I’m sure that you wherever you are can do something similar with your human culture.

        Humanity gets a bad press – made out to be useless eaters and ready for the chop and past our sell by date and sold out etc. Yet hopefully what follows is an illustration of what a human being can do with their local history and culture so that we can know at least amongst our human selves that we have got what it takes to be fully interstellar even as we are.

A GALAXY  OF  TARTAN

It seems that if life on Earth is anything to go by, the Universe is a place absolutely teeming with life. The early 1990’s DNA-for-nothing models by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute do suggest what the Mayans already had models for in their ‘Loom of Maya’ thousands BC that Life naturally emerges out of chaos.

NASA photographs of forests and lakes on Mars and the discovery of hundreds of other Earth-type worlds that the establishment is prepared to admit to does suggest that the Universe could be full of; dynasties and regiments, merchants and clans who may take a certain amount of pride in their appearance beyond the traditional silvery one-piece suit we all know and love.

In other words, perhaps the real time of tartan is yet to arrive.

In Scotland on planet Earth though tartan can be traced back to the 3^rd century, found in an earthenware jar full of coins near the Roman, Antonine Wall.

This tartan is called the Falkirk Sett.

It was a simple design, taking its colours from the variety of natural brown and white colourings from the wool of the indigenous Soay sheep.

The word tartan itself probably derives from the French word tiretaine that refers to a coarse blend of wool and linen, and not to the colourful Assyrian General Tartan mentioned in Isaiah XX, 1.

The Gaelic reality, however, in Scotland is that ‘tuar’ means colour and ‘tan’ means district, and despite the culture of French imports in aristocratic personnel and exotic wines, ‘tuartan’ seems a reasonable description of the regionalisations that tartan actually represented.

The pattern of an individual tartan is usually called a ‘sett’.

The name sett refers to its structure that was originally defined by the measurement of the width of each stripe.

More recently precisely counting the threads and creating a numerical index have replaced this method.

Most setts are symmetrical. Each series of stripes is reversed around a central stripe, known as a pivot. The blocks of pattern are then regularly repeated throughout the entire design.  Sometimes asymmetrical tartans are produced and, also, the sequence of stripes on the loom’s warp threads (lengthwise) and weft (cross threads) can be different and this also affects the symmetrical appearance of the design.

Additionally, tartan colours can be ‘ancient’ i.e. muted and mellow from natural vegetable dyes, or ‘modern’ using chemical dyes available from the 1860’s AD.

Tartan wearing Scots have been found reposing in Stone Age Dolmens from about 2000 BC in Northern China, but that does seem to suggest for men of good taste, that the infamous Scottish diet hasn’t improved over the millennia.

Although China does seem a rather long way to go for some good cuisine.

Although ‘bought and sold for English gold’ because there was; ‘sic a parcel O rogues in the Nation’:  the Scots flew their colours into battle with the sentiments; ‘lay the proud usurper low, tyrants fall in every foe, liberty’s in every blow, let us do or die’ [Burns, R].

Ultimately betrayed by greed and driven off to battle as cannon fodder for their overlords in over three centuries of shepherding the Scots today generally still don’t make NCO when they take the King’s Shilling … that’s another ‘changeless’ tradition.

Tartan therefore has a provenance in Scotland steeped in the ‘Romance’ of endless warfare and bloodshed and was used to signify one’s roots.

It was that splash of individualistic colour that gave the Scots their unique display of pride and made them such a thorn in the side of so many contenders.

Tartan is however, part of the landscape, part of the mountains and glens, part of the waterfalls and the ferns, the bracken and the heather, the deer and the eagle, the salmon and the herring gulls, the spirit of the sea and the solan goose.

The flurry of tartan is like the crash of waves on the shores, an endless song and a whirling reel, an ageless statement from the grandeur of Earth.

Tartan is a resistance to banned surnames such as Macgregor, it is a resistance to banned bagpipes and banned tartan, it is a resistance to oppression, it is a statement of unique identity and a commitment to a family and a commune, it is a social statement, its wearing is to be the custodian of history and heritage, it is of the provenance of protector of the family and the weak.

The ‘children of the mist’ as the outlawed clan Macgregor were then referred to are like everyone who knows how it feels to be oppressed by overwhelming numbers and resources.

The people with no name, the dispossessed the resilient.

Having said that, the MacDonald’s got their revenge after the massacre of Glencoe by the Campbell’s of Argyll because once they were all eventually cleared out to make way for the sheep – they went over to America and invented the Big Mac.

Imperial cuisine has never been the same after that.

Very few younger people today would pass up a Big Mac for a plate of Campbell’s soup.

After the unpopular Act of Union with England in 1707AD which forbade there to be taxes levied unequally in any part of the Union, there was a great ‘wearing of the tartan’ as an act of protest, even in Edinburgh, but by the time Margaret Thatcher had introduced the ‘poll tax’ only in Scotland in the 1980’s, there was only late opening and Tartan Special lager in the National ‘unconsciousness’.

There just never seemed to be any need to take Independent charge of all that oil and wealth in Scottish National waters despite the shortages in hospitals and industry.

Although in the 21^st Century Tartan seems to have lost its glamour in Scotland mainly due to the social, political and cultural liquidiser or blender of the new ecumenical world order – in the rest of the world it has risen beyond and perhaps surpassed the fire of its origins.

From hundreds of Highland Games in North America, and National tartan day in the States, and from; Taiwan and South Korea, Japan, to Australia and New Zealand, the glamour and romance of Tartan is alive. e.g. in India, a popular Sikh design, the Singh tartan, was commissioned in 1999 AD.

In these new tartan fusions, there are elements of geography and culture and their components and a celebration of our local origins. These ingredients go to make the act of creating a tartan a display of cultural strength and unity.

e.g. the New York City Tartan took pale blue from the Hudson River, azure from Scotland’s saltire, green to represent the countryside, red for a local charity and black for the 9.11 victims.

Mankind therefore was at perfect liberty to successfully; rationalise, compile, register and present new tartans for a whole new era and global vision of Scotland and mankind.

‘For a’ that and a’ that’, despite the reservations of Dynastic considerations and its attendant ‘dignities and a’ that’, man to man the world o’er could be wearing their own tartans for a’ that …

So much for Mankind therefore, but what if Extra Terrestrial Civilisations wanted their own tartans too ?

It became apparent in North Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland in 1993 AD  during a series of interstellar contacts that Extra Terrestrial Civilisations had a lot in common with what it took to be Scottish.

Time after time they will have encountered; oppressors and tyrants, overlords and traitors, cynicism and greed and will consequently have faced the annihilation of all the things that they thought were beautiful.

Minding the fences and boundaries though, whereas almost a territorial prerogative in common with other, biological creatures, is a necessary part of a home defence process. This enables and perpetuates amongst those who have agreed to be our peers, the facilitation of; creativity, dialogue, tool use, information and data processing and modelling, storage, logistics, government, analysis and intelligence gathering.

On a day to day basis, however, every sunrise by whatever star one steers there is a great need not to merely bear the burden of defence but to find enough people happy to take their turn shouldering that yoke.

Over time therefore, good people and good civilisations can be worn down and fragmented by the dreary vision of endless conflict.

Defending our own therefore has to become more fun, more recreational.

This ET civilisation in 1993AD claimed that it was technologically superior and could do all the usual stuff but was in fact looking for good artistic ideas that would bring a sense of unity and purpose and colour to that endless tedium of dealing with the usual suspects.

They pointed out that the Scots were always celebrating despite their hardships and then I had the idea that perhaps feeling more Scottish was maybe the answer to any interstellar troubles.

How could we reasonably do that they enquired ?

Well, maybe Interstellar Civilisations needed to re-enforce their reason for being by making a statement of social pride and intent, and to make a point of celebrating their identity. Perhaps they needed to incorporate the Scottish tradition of tartan.

We should use some system to analyse an interstellar society, its families and social groups, its geography, its culture and its history and then link the way they have developed and persisted within their solar system geography etc to a colour index we could have the basis for some kind of system. We could allocate numerical and colour judgements about the persistence of what we thought was good and bad. That which had relative social integrity within each social context could be assessed on a numerical scale that was teamed up with a colour palette.

We would use a value system that reflected our highest ideals in each social virtue e.g. democracy, industry, technological evolution, spiritual Christianity, defence  etc and our merits in these things would be our brightest colours.

Where we have failed e.g. in governance or industry or social integration to evolve or adapt for long periods this would add in increasing amounts of black, and lower frequency colours to our tartan.

The central part of the tartan, ‘the pivot’, would be the main theme or keynote of our society and the success with which it has up till now organised its life essences. e.g. a long time immersed in ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ biology before leaping into freely-sustaining mode would give the tartan a darker and more muted feel. The equivalent of the Scottish ‘ancient’.

A relatively uncomplicated progress into freely-sustaining mode, on the other hand,  would give the tartan a brighter theme as that order of beings will have been given another purpose and track to follow.

The colours dark or bright do not though reflect judgements of good and evil, rather, periods of immersion in certain social themes.

There would need to be some ‘absolute’ scale and database by which these relative merits could be calibrated but I’m sure that Extra Terrestrial society has many such assets.

Biology is not the only type of reality in the Cosmos, as was written of by the Reverend Robert Kirk in 1697AD in Aberfoyle, Scotland.

Beings could crystallise bodies from the essence of the air – he wrote in his ‘Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Faeries’.

We hear of Extra Terrestrial civilisations that are stuck in the hellfire of biological metabolism ‘where their worm does not die, nor their fires go out’,  Mark 10:47, 48, and from various abduction stories that there are various races of ET’s looking for spare parts or upgrades.

Beyond that rut and dark vision though there is the True Vine of Christ’s love and an endless supply of the waters of life. John 15.

Beings fed by the true vine are  ‘freely-sustaining’ and they donate the water of life to others in the vine and are supplied in turn.

They love one another as they love God who is the fountain of all essence and because of that love they supply life to their peers. They also love themselves as they love God, and by respecting their own integrity and spiritual worth, they remain healthy components of and within the vine.

Beyond the daily grind of biology, therefore, is a whole Multiverse of happy high-energy life-forms perpetuating social structures.

The central theme colour of the pivot in an interstellar tartan therefore would be arrived at by evaluating our soul group’s performance within some time scale in which we have all agreed to participate, and how much of that timescale we have spent being predominately biological.

The other structural colours of a tartan, are the bands of colour around the central pivot in the tartan design.

These can relate to one or more aspects of social organisation and deployment.

For example the civilisation of our roots may have had many turbulent metamorphoses and transformations, may have experienced periods of warfare and dis-integrity and unspiritual totalitarianism. As a result, this society may have taken a long time to achieve certain benchmarks of spiritual consensus and reality.

On some scale to be supplied by interstellar research, these civilisations could be calibrated as having relative success and bright colours in attaining certain benchmarks in an agreed short time though it is acknowledged that the appearance of relative success of one civilisation may not totally represent the investment in diversity, detail and dialectic of a civilisation with darker colours and hence a more chaotic history.

With the central pivot colours indicative of the history of evolution within biological and spiritual form, and the main structural support colours within that tartan design pertinent to the social reality of  evolution and transformation within the species, the highlight colours of that particular tartan, usually the narrow band of colour that provides a relatively sparse contrasting thread, could pertain to the cultural product of the society and soul group.

The highlight colours would also need some interstellar scholastic thought to assess.

That is, are the tools; artefacts, ideologies, software and cultural objects and processes conducive to love and Catholic virtue, or, have these tools on average, provided more worldly leverage.

Both of these tool creation strategies have great social worth and directly complement the other, thus having dark or light colours here is again not referring to qualities of good and evil, but to relative benefits to the soul and social fabric.

Scottish tartan has bands of colour of various widths and symmetries within its structure.

The width of the various bands of colour within the three part tartan structure of; essence, social structure and tools, can be a reflection of the relative weight or proportion of temporal commitment any society has devoted to any one theme.

The creation of an Interstellar Tartan Database by a think tank of interstellar scholars who could make evaluations about social history relative to some scale may eventually produce a software with which one can calculate and register ones own social tartan for such things as; tribal group or clan or dynasty or species groupings, stellar regions, merchants, regiments and space navies, soul types and cosmic origins etc

There is absolutely no reason therefore for Tartan to ever end in Bonnie Scotland in an era of mankind that may at some point be submerged beneath a deluge of geological cataclysm and a deep cold sea.

Even when the face of Scotland changes forever there will always be a reason to be proud of what it once was, for in its heroic passing was something handed on to our Imperial future that becomes part of our communal destiny.

SUNBURST TARTAN  -  STARTAN  A NEW INTERSTELLAR LANGUAGE.

Traditional Tartan can be many colours, shades, colour palettes and designs. It can be woven of many fabrics.

It can also be made into colourful patchwork and artistically integrated with other textures and textiles in clothing.

Traditionally, there have been some very beautiful examples of that from Clothing and Costume Designers.

As a fabric though Tartan tends to be box-like or grid-like and as such it either fits into our feeling of formality or regularity with its colourful building blocks and girders or not.

The formal block-like regularity of Tartan can be changed by the use of patchwork designs, where pieces of the fabric can be re-orientated to break up the flow of lines.

This though, depending on the colours in use and various other mismatches of symmetry and depth of line could be rather chaotic and imposing.

The weave of a tartan with its criss-cross and ratios of colourful lines is one of the most important aspects of its structure and significance.

What if, this interweave of colourful lines still took place, but in an irregular manner that integrated a greater element of design ?

Suppose that from a central point such as a circular, triangular, hexagonal, stellate, crescent  or other geometric design and combinations of design, regular or irregular; the colourful threads of the tartan could radiate as if the rays of the sun to merge and interweave with other rays from other ‘sunbursts’ at irregular angles.

The overall tartan itself becomes a combination of radiating nexus designs, and their outreaching coloured tartan threads.

If the lengths of the overlapping and outreaching and intertwining sunburst threads were themselves designed to form e.g. polygonal blocks of asymmetric tartan, with careful colour palette co-ordination tartan design could progress into a more informal idiom.

This design can be woven on current industrial looms.

The central suns of those sunbursts do not necessarily have to espouse some cultural logo or inclusion but could merely be islands of blending colour from the same overall palette as the tartan threads themselves.

The colour ratios of the threads in these tartans however are intrinsically preserved.

Sunburst Tartan, or ‘Startan’ can be defined as;

‘An interweave of the multicoloured threads radiating as halos from sunbursts or other centrally themed radiating designed or plain objects, which creates a variously; obtuse and irregular or non-square or non-rectangular, symmetrical or asymmetrical tartan weave.

The whole collage of ‘sunbursts’ or other radiating geometric or ethnic shapes can be either set, mounted or interwoven on a backcloth of suitable fabric or merged as one layer by some interstellar process.

Alternatively, it can be woven and designed for a modern loom in the textiles industry using more traditional techniques and computer aided design.

In interstellar terms though, there is an opportunity to symbolise from the spectrum of colours and objects the investment  and transference in and between social institutions and groups.

Well, maybe Interstellar Civilisations needed to re-enforce their reason for being by making a statement of social pride and intent, and to make a point of celebrating their identity. Perhaps they needed to incorporate the Scottish tradition of tartan.

We should use some system to analyse an interstellar society, its families and social groups, its geography, its culture and its history and then link the way they have developed and persisted within their solar system geography etc to a colour index we could have the basis for some kind of system. We could allocate numerical and colour judgements about the persistence of what we thought was good and bad. That which had relative social integrity within each social context could be assessed on a numerical scale that was teamed up with a colour palette.

We would use a value system that reflected our highest ideals in each social virtue e.g. democracy, industry, technological evolution, spiritual Christianity, defence  etc and our merits in these things would be our brightest colours.

Where we have failed e.g. in governance or industry or social integration to evolve or adapt for long periods this would add in increasing amounts of black, and lower frequency colours to our tartan.

The historic frequency and intensity of these transactions can map out colourful associations between cultural and ethnic webs.

Using a convention of geometric or accessible cultural symbols at the centre of the sunburst in a Startan weave it becomes possible to commemorate alliances, Federations and other social unions e.g. of a personal, family, family group, soul group, racial nature etc.

Startan maps could map out whole histories of colourful exchanges between Empires, Institutions and Families.

The colours of the Startans emanating from these central logos then represent the historically known  transfer and exchanges between; commerce, belief systems, knowledge, cultural evolution, and the story of personal or group commitments.

Whole tapestries could tell the story of and stories within a civilisation without recourse to any other language but in terms of the medium and colourful frequency of exchanges and investments amongst those with agreements.

Startan as a meta-language is also universal in appeal, as it would be an instantly recognisable and accessible pictorial record of social transactions, interactions and history and also of political intent.

Startan as a new artform and clothing idea can be seen as a complement to the more traditional and regular tartan designs.

As a science it will be possible to read and interpret the exchanges between all things; atomic, cellular, organic, personal, robotic,

Imperial or Cosmic in terms of colourful energy frequency maps that historically accounted for;  distribution, timing, intensity, velocity, frequency of exchanges and investments.

Perhaps an InterGalactic Civilisation will develop a device to read the language of Universal exchange and identify the highlights and beauty spots in a social tartan more quickly.

I named such a device that could do that a ‘trawler’ where like the fishing vessel of the same name it could fish at a very deep level for other Scottish Andrews, lost in some alien internet.

I would hope that even if and when Scotland vanishes beneath the Atlantic Ocean, that which was Scottish will last forever because it is useful for it to do so.

Startan was invented on the 10^th of October, 2007AD by Andrew Hennessey and it yet remains to be seen whether there will be any take-up of this technological artwork.

I would hope there will be.

THE STORY OF INTERSTELLAR HANDICAP GOLF

Golf is a sport that is thought to have originated in the Middle Ages as one of the many ball and stick games. However, the game of golf took root and developed in Scotland and it was in the 18^th century that it spread to the rest of the world.

In 1554 AD in Leith, Edinburgh there is a reference to ‘the Cordiners and Gowf Ball Manufacturers of North Leith.’ Cordiners were shoemakers and leather workers, so it would follow that they were making leather cased golf balls. The Leith Links golf course itself was one of the very first of its kind in Scotland.

In 1724 golf balls were stuffed with feathers, in circa 1848 they were the solid gutta percha (gum and cloth) make, in 1901 they were rubber cored, in 1905 William Taylor patented the dimple pattern, and from the 1920’s onward the standards would be regularly refined till in 1981 the governing body the R & A – the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, made the 1.68 inch ball mandatory as of 1982.

The game has been played with clubs made of various materials that over the centuries became progressively more lightweight and resilient. The traditional wooden clubs from the early long nosed clubs of the 17^th century progressed through the Persimmon woods of the 1890’s to steel shafted in 1929 to alloys in the 1960’s to carbon and graphite in the 1970’s.

These later clubs and their intended usage on the course were crafted with the use of; high technology wind tunnels and the scientific study of anatomy, human physiology and ergonomics and video images on various computer simulations that encompassed factors such as; terrain, weathering and fabric fatigue on modelling software.

In the late 20^th Century, Golf had effectively become a hi tek industry on the cutting edge of materials development.

Then in 1993 AD in North Leith during an alien encounter with a strange civilisation that alleged that it had intentions to redevelop some of the ideas, artefacts and materials from the human era, I was told by a being that materialised in my flat that they wanted me to think of all the beautiful things that meant Scotland to me.

That if I could think of ways that these social ideas could be less tainted and used to serve the common good of a real civilisation that they would be used in reality and redeveloped on a massive scale.

 Ideas both comical and tragic held me as threads that were uniquely Scottish were lifted directly from my own awestruck mind. By some process unknown they spun a tapestry of wonder in my mind and soul. It was as if I was hooked up to some enormous database of; art, fabric, texture and forms and that I was searching for relevance amongst the Scottish section.

There were battles and bloodshed, Kings and crowns and artefacts, pictures of castles and traditional cultural things, Inventions that were Scottish, geography and places, indigenous wildlife, tartans and textures, cultural art and design, tweeds and geology,  food and drink, games and sports – someone had been doing a lot of research.  

Nothing beautiful would ever be wasted. And then to me came the image of a game that I have never possessed the worldly wealth or physique to play - a game that originated in Scotland - and I realised the scope and potential of this enterprise for, Interstellar it could be, Universal it could be. I was shown beings playing Golf.

All species of every physique, size and strength could play this game against one another because it is a game that does not require physical contact, yet retains a communal appeal, being a celebration both of skill and the natural beauty of the environment.

They say all non-human beings can do amazing things with mind over matter and mastery of time and space. In the time it takes a human to hit a golf ball to a green on Earth a non-human being could run between the tee and the green maybe one hundred times they said, but then I realised that if these super-enhanced perceptions could be handicapped by some sort of handicapping system then the game of Interstellar Golf would then become a relationship between; the spirit of the golfer, and, the environment of the golf course. Thus the interstellar game was not merely a hole in one every time.

Golf then becomes a celebration of spirit and natural beauty not merely a non-human opportunity to annul and supersede the natural process.

There would simply need to be an appropriate handicapping system so that a big beings hardest hit would not send the ball into orbit and a small beings hardest hit would go far (relative to a human social and biological scale.)

I imagined the image of a golf ball floating by itself as if full of technology, then realised that by a system of physical data, and weights and measures supplied by each participating culture that Computers could analyse  Beings by weight and mass within and between species.

This golf ball droid, its flight data, momentum and spin etc could be calibrated relative to a human standard of amateur and professional musculature and performance.

A handicapping system could enable the smallest being to play against the largest, where the flying robot ball could be braked in flight by controlled instructions from the computer if it was hit by a large physically powerful Being, and, augmented in speed if hit by a small lighter Being.

Not every being within the same species would necessarily qualify for the maximum level of data enhancement and there would need to be some regulatory process to deal with relative social weightings such as lifestyle factors.

For example; ET’s who party too much would have that lifestyle translated into human Bio-logic, or, ET’s who meditated and focussed on the Spirit would increase their game performance because of the greater abundance of Life force that would naturally occur within their Bio-logic. etc

I smiled when I realised that Golf could be made into a Universal game - a Scottish contribution to the Civilisations of the Cosmos of eternal proportions.

There would need to be new golf courses on every planet I enthused, Championships and Tournaments, merchandising and fashions, trophies made out of various Scottish semi-precious rocks.

There could be franchises for the manufacture of clubs that were suitable for certain ET species but which did not contravene the Royal and Ancient guidelines.

Then I realised that the golf ball itself  by use of a hard holographic interphase could mutate in flight to adapt its scale to the scale and proportions of any course. I then realised that on other planets, gravity was going to be a factor too … and that the relative human gravity standard should be taken from the first Tee of the Old Course at St Andrew’s Golf Course, Scotland.

Realising that with a technological golf ball such things were possible and that interstellar technology could make all sorts of theatre possible on golf courses that do not happen now on Earth, I then had the idea that the game could also be played at night.

Golf Courses and trees and shrubs could be lit up with theatrical lighting of golds and violets and reds and blues, and fairways and green could have very subtle lighting – such that the golf course was a place of artistic splendour.

In this environment, the golf ball itself could be made by various settings by vocal declaration to illuminate to various degrees and in different colours and would also be able to emanate signals so that it could be variously tracked and located amongst the darker but beautifully lit undergrowth.

Also, in the era of mankind, Golf was initially incorporated as a gentleman’s social and then networking pursuit and would laterally attract criticism for ‘spoiling a good walk’.

This old joke referred to the somewhat sedate parklands of its usual settings. However with the aid of fast space age gravity defying technological conveyances, golf could be played in extreme landscapes full of scenic splendour. There could be some very challenging shots off cliff-tops, canyons and waterfalls, or pitching up steep mountainous inclines to nested greens and bunkers.

This would require organisation and co-operation, design and artistry, regulation and creativity and lots and lots of enthusiasm.

There is a whole Universe of wonderful golfers out there waiting to tee off. The sport of golf itself and its first code of rules in 1744AD from the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers evolved, and by the period of governance of the R&A, after the inception of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club as the games governing body in 1897 AD, it then went through various incarnations of the Rules of Golf up to and including the Rolex sponsored R&A Rules of Golf Book of 2004AD

It only becomes a matter of time then till the Interstellar Rules of Golf Code is on the agenda at the AGM of the R&A given the influx of non-humanity on the planet and the increasing falsification of the game by superhuman powers, processes and technologies.

The game of Golf was invented by Humanity in Scotland, but without the participation of human beings in the future it can grow to become one of the most important tools of interstellar and interspecies dialogue.

It may become one of Scotland’s greatest gifts to the Universe.