As a land surveyor I have been professionally tied to the ground and measurements of our oblate spheroid as if it were flat. Astronomy is a method by which I can launch others off the flat earth model we innately cling to and let them get a glimpse outside the atmosphere of dim rocky blobs or gaseous nothings only reached by a few hearty metal probes in the last forty years.|Although rocket propulsion has enabled these recent close encounters of the nearest kind only within our solar system, the persistence of vision to travel beyond the solar neighborhood is to be born by those new eyes as yet unopened to other starlight.|My earthbound vision has been enhanced by the images sent back from the first space probes since the onset of the space age as a young boy. It's doubtful I will ever venture into space, but I can pass on my past views to those unfolding events as a witness to future events outside our atmosphere.|As an amateur astronomer I have seen children and adults vision being propelled at the speed of light to other worlds in the blink of an eye by simply looking through a cardboard tube with small lenses or mirrors at each end. For an instant they realize they are spinning with other orbs around a so-so average star bound together by gravity and circumstance into unique family of stellar siblings that have been going around together for almost forever. That brief glimpse can sometimes last a lifetime.