The End Of An Era

The Space Shuttle Atlantis had a perfect touchdown today, coming back to Earth and ending the 30 year shuttle program on a high if somewhat mournful note. What America's next step in space exploration is going to be is unclear at this point but for now, it's all Russia and China bay-bee, because America is out.

And it's hard not to see why. After all, we have political incompetence, fiscal insanity and an economy that's barely breathing to tackle so the eyes of the nation are most definately Earthbound at this point- but I'm really hoping not for long.

There is a small but growing number of private companies attempting to break into space- Elon Musk, the Internet Kajillionaire was so committed to the idea of living on other planets that he founded SpaceX and is trying to make space travel more affordable to bring that vision to life.

That's the biggest barrier to extending humanity's reach into space- the cost. The sheer effort it takes to escape Earth's gravity well is the hardest part. Once you do that, anything is theoretically possible and if pioneers like Musk and his SpaceX company don't do it, space elevator technology is bound to come along at some point.

Some see the end of the shuttle as an end to America's ambitions, which I can't say is wrong. We seem to have lost the plot, so to speak, as a nation and it may sound corny to say it, but at the end of the day, we put a man on the moon, won World War II and got through the Cold War without sending humanity into fiery extinction- we can do anything! And hopefully we can rediscover that attitude in the next few years- but I think the shuttle's time had come. It was confining us to low orbit and the International Space Station was built largely to give the shuttle something to do- it was time to move forward, not stay in one place as we had been doing for three decades.

So what do I want? I want us to go to Mars and back to the Moon and establish a permanent presence on both. That's probably asking a lot for my lifetime, so I'll be happy if I can see people on both the Mars and the Moon before I die! (Technology has a way of doing that do you, you know that? It's going to be 2015 in four years and there is no sign of flying cars OR hoverboards. I guess where Doc Brown will be going, he will need roads.)

Ultimately though, there's nothing like looking up at the stars to make you realize how small you are. And then you think about the millenia of history, civilization and beautiful things that humanity is done (yes, I ignore the horrible things in this case, I know) and you realize how small they are- and how easy it would be for a comet or an asteroid or a superflare to just fry us all and wipe it all out. And then it occurs to you: if we can go to other planets and live there, all of those things- they could be remembered forever. And as a species, we would survive...