Centauri Dreams was launched with the idea of providing the occasional commentary on space research with interstellar flight implications. What surprised this writer in the past fifteen months has been the fact that an ‘occasional’ schedule just doesn’t work. The news coming in, from exoplanetary discoveries to new research directions in propulsion and robotics, has kept the publication schedule fast and furious. Centauri Dreams now publishes six days a week except for rare periods when I’m traveling (I don’t carry a laptop).
The recent hosting change went much more smoothly than I had anticipated, having read horror stories from other writers who had attempted such things. In fact, it was more or less glitch-free, and by now Google has combed out many of the duplicate entries still pointing to the old pages. Only two major issues remain to be addressed.
Status of the archives. For a variety of reasons, I am transferring the articles from the old site’s archives one at a time (this plays into a current research project and also serves as a quality check). The archives are now complete save for a three-month window between mid-January 2005 and mid-April. At the present rate, I should have the complete archives transferred within about two weeks.
Comments and their uses. The comments Centauri Dreams has published so far have been of high quality and it is a pleasure to see readers’ thoughts on some of these issues. But I find the comment feature trickier to use than I would like (some readers have had trouble getting their comments in). Things would be simpler if I opened the site to anyone for comment without registration, but unfortunately the amount of ‘comment spam’ now hitting sites like these is immense. Because I don’t want to use time I could be posting here culling out spam come-ons for mortgages and imitation wristwatches, it’s necessary to keep the registration feature as is. I only hope that the next version of WordPress makes leaving comments a bit more straightforward.
As always, I thank Centauri Dreams readers for their continuing encouragement and interest in interstellar flight, a subject I think crucial for mankind’s future. Ad astra, and sooner rather than later.
