The task at hand is to create a change in the climate of opinion about the true potentials of "space exploration." Space exploration, like the rest of us, grew up in the Cold War; like the rest of us, it must now find a new way to live. And, as history has proven, science fiction has a very real and influential role in space exploration. History shows that true space exploration is not about budgets. It's about vision. At its heart it has always been about vision.
Let's create the vision.
BUCKYMANIA
Carbon, like every other element on this planet, came to us from outer space. Carbon and its compounds are well-known in galactic gas-clouds, and in the atmosphere and core of stars, which burn helium to produce carbon. Carbon is the sixth element in the periodic table, and forms about two-tenths of one percent of Earth's crust. Earth's biosphere (most everything that grows, moves, breathes, photosynthesizes, or reads F&SF) is constructed mostly of waterlogged carbon, with a little nitrogen, phosphorus and such for leavening.
There are over a million known and catalogued compounds of carbon: the study of these compounds, and their profuse and intricate behavior, forms the major field of science known as organic chemistry.
Since prehistory, "pure" carbon has been known to humankind in three basic flavors. First, there's smut (lampblack or "amorphous carbon"). Then there's graphite: soft, grayish-black, shiny stuff -- (pencil "lead" and lubricant). And third is that surpassing anomaly, "diamond," which comes in extremely hard translucent crystals.
Smut is carbon atoms that are poorly linked. Graphite is carbon