This column is dedicated to the modern wonder that is the International Space Station and what it took collectively to place the station, internationally, in space. (I apologize for mangling Masefield's poem, but reckon "The Ultimate Computer" remains on my mind after last week's column.)

Almost twenty-six years ago shuttle Enterprise rolled out. Subsequently this past week marked the quarter-century anniversary of said shuttle actually matching rubber to tarmac - dropped from an airplane, of course, not that it dampened my enthusiasm much at the time. (Another strange Trek 25th : The launch of the two Voyager probes - V'Ger 2, V'Ger 6, what's the difference? - both roughly a light-day away, still the farthest rocks we've ever thrown outward.)

That shuttle led to other shuttles which, with a little friendly help, carried up bunches of little rocks. These they assembled into a fantastic new rock of a kind never seen before, one now seen crossing my part of the sky for the next few evenings. I watched it pass overhead last night, the brightest dot in the heavens above creeping all but imperceptibly across the sky, multicolored and twinkling across the starry background.

Go and watch NASA TV for awhile. You realize that the station is racing across the sky pretty quickly, orbiting approximately every ninety minutes. The planet rotates on its axis a good measure in that time, not patient for the station to return. Hence the path of ISS appears to stripe its way along and sooner or later everybody looking up gets a passing view.

Anyway the summer night air, the fat crescent of the moon, the slow silent arc of the station, all gave me a sense of presence, a sense of well-being in that our path underfoot is hale. Our tall ship is humanity's future, symbolized by the starships like Enterprise we've come to know and love. (Sure, that may be a few steps beyond a rock-shield, but a sneak peak won't hurt, especially if it keeps us motivated.)

One premise to a future long-term survival is that so long as big rocks keep falling from the sky, it's gonna take something up THERE to keep them from getting down HERE. This may be a very nice gilded cage, but it's still a gilded cage (as Kirk points out to Chekov). One pelted with rocks by stellar forces ineluctable if not unruly boys. But "de ayer" is not "de ayer" ... something can be done.

You can look up yourself and see how it starts.