by bit, some of my own thoughts — which are unlikely, though, to become as popular as those of the Great Helmsman.

I will start with your apposition of loyal and skeptical. Now disloyalty, or more precisely treachery, was considered perhaps the greatest of crimes in mediaeval times. Loyalty is one of the main themes of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon, and in Dante’s Inferno, the bottom layer of Hell was reserved for those who had betrayed “lords and benefactors”. Satan himself was positioned right at the bottom, with three heads, each of which was continuously champing away on a traitor. The middle head was chewing — no surprise — Judas Iscariot, but the other two were masticating — wait for it — Brutus and Cassius, theSpinning to Mars
The Space Review

Thirty years ago today a group of scientists, grad students, and all around Mars enthusiasts wrapped up the four-day Case for Mars conference in Boulder, Colorado. While there, they drafted plans for a human Mars spacecraft that became enshrined—at least for a little while—in popular culture. A large spinning vessel consisting of three nearly identical ships and their landing craft, it was a serious attempt at defining a human mission to Mars. By the early 1990s, one of the Case for Mars participants, Carter Emmart, produced a beautifully detailed model of the spinning spacecraft that was placed on display in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Now, after a long absence, that model is back in public view.