Monday, July 17, 2006

The not so final frontier

The space shuttle is back safely on terra firma, which means the space programme is back in contention. Thank goodness. There's a space station to build up there - a fragile jetty compared to the stuff that'll be there in a couple of centuries time. It's important to colonise the solar system. There's a large asteroid somewhere that's going to hit the Earth sometime, and we don't want to be all at home when it arrives. Colonies on the Moon and Mars are like back-up discs for humanity. They can reboot civilisation if things go disastrously wrong.
Of course the best goal is to colonise an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, but that could take a millennium or two.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that Virgin Galactic kick starts a race into space, to save humanity - in the medium term at least.

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