Thoughts Upon Leaving Home [from 7/20/09]

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” ~Clarke's Second Law

~Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong step off that ladder onto the surface of the Moon. I expect most of you know that by now, even if it's not being plastered all over the mass media, there are enough reminders.

I was watching that moment of course. I'd been a hard core consumer of Sci-Fi for a decade even at that point, six weeks before my seventeenth birthday, and this was in fact a Dream Come True.

Most seem rather blasé about the whole thing now. But keep in mind that at time it had only been forty two years since Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic. And in the intervening four decades, we as a species have not made a comparable journey.

This is not merely disappointing, it is distressing.

Becoming a spacefaring race is crucial to us as a species for reasons of survival and for both our Evolutionary and Spiritual growth. Yes, the Earth is our home, but all of you reading this have various names for those who never leave home and I suspect not one of them is complementary.

Which leads me to the following; the image of a prototype design for an FTL Star Ship.



Yes, it's a hypothetical design propelled by a hypothetical engine powered by a hypothetical power source, though some think that power source is not all that hypothetical. The important part is that actual design plans are beginning to emerge.

There is still plenty to do inside our Solar System:

~Build a space elevator

~Industrialize the Moon and mine it for Helium 3

~Create a zone for the relocation Earth's heavy industries

~Mine asteroids for that industry

~Build space habitats and even orbitals

~Terraform and colonize Mars

~And in the process, change ourselves as it's likely unmodified humans will not fare well in space for any length of time.

But the Solar System is also still our home and one day we will need to leave that home as well...and for that we need Star Ships.

I know this may seem pretty far fetched to many, so let me close this with another quote from Sir Arthur: “If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.”

And Happy Anniversary, Apollo 11.