Life Is Not Purgatory
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Shuttle in the Scrapheap?
I have always been fascinated with the space program indeed with the very concept of space travel at all, and I find it sad that with the hopefully uneventful return of ‘Discovery’ tomorrow morning – that will be the end of the shuttle program and may put the fate of the International Space Station in jeopardy.
With the retirement (forced or otherwise) the world’s only publicly acknowledged superpower will be without the capability for manned spaceflight for at least five years as they move the design of a new space transport system to replace the shuttle.
Is there a (near) future for Space Exploration, or must we focus on the problems within our own atmosphere before we reach outward?
I am of the belief especially in the wake of the terror attacks against the US and UK that we must reach outward… it is only a matter of time before terrorist organizations are able to construct one or more nuclear weapons… weapons stranger than either of the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago – are small, portable and more deadly. We may just blast ourselves back into the dark ages, and I do not think that there are enough resources left on this planet for us to go though another Industrial Revolution…
Perhaps it is the hope that putting humans on colonies outside our own atmosphere, perhaps even /proving/ the existence of extra-terrestrial life – may make humanity realize that there is only one race, the human race.
I have always been fascinated with the space program indeed with the very concept of space travel at all, and I find it sad that with the hopefully uneventful return of ‘Discovery’ tomorrow morning – that will be the end of the shuttle program and may put the fate of the International Space Station in jeopardy.
With the retirement (forced or otherwise) the world’s only publicly acknowledged superpower will be without the capability for manned spaceflight for at least five years as they move the design of a new space transport system to replace the shuttle.
Is there a (near) future for Space Exploration, or must we focus on the problems within our own atmosphere before we reach outward?
I am of the belief especially in the wake of the terror attacks against the US and UK that we must reach outward… it is only a matter of time before terrorist organizations are able to construct one or more nuclear weapons… weapons stranger than either of the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago – are small, portable and more deadly. We may just blast ourselves back into the dark ages, and I do not think that there are enough resources left on this planet for us to go though another Industrial Revolution…
Perhaps it is the hope that putting humans on colonies outside our own atmosphere, perhaps even /proving/ the existence of extra-terrestrial life – may make humanity realize that there is only one race, the human race.
