As the pilot turned into the landing pattern for the Los Angeles International Airport, I peered through the port window at the flashing beacon on the airport's flight control tower, at the brilliant airfield lights that looked like scattered jewels gleaming their reds, yellows, and blues in the dark night. I could not help but think back to my summers of boating, and to the lighted buoys marking harbor channels and the white beacon of Faulkner's Light that helped me safely ply the nighttime waters of Long island Sound.

When we settled down on the runway, I realized that amidst all the technology of invisible signals guiding this plane safely across the continent - RADAR, GPS, VOR - beacons of visible light were still an important aid to navigation at airports.

Lights.

Lights flashing. Lights burning a continuous bright. Lights rotating to pierce the pitch night. Yes, lights. What a simple technology when compared with all the advanced instrumentation used to guide ships. Here, the pilot of this multimillion-dollar jetliner used lights to help find safe landing on a distant runway in a city that's never heard of Faulkner's Island Lighthouse. And lights too, to guide the plane for safe taxiing once on the ground.

I envision a future where space travel will be as easy and as frequent as sea and air travel. Silver and white ships will whisk us to the moon, to Mars and Venus, to human-dreamed and robot-built colonies orbiting Earth, and, in time, to the indescribable worlds we will one day reach orbiting the suns of far solar systems.

Greeting us in this inevitable future will be space lighthouses, their beacons guiding the solar sailing vessels of tomorrow.

The offspring of the world's ancient marine lighthouses, in whatever physical form they may take in the future, will still welcome travel-wary passengers and crews. It will be this way for as long as there will be travelers to distant ports on Earth and to other worlds far from Earth.

Shine on bright beacons! And guide all far-travelers safely home. ♦