This year the Americans will retire the Space shuttle, 50 years after Yuri Gagarin left this planet, the first human in space. So what is the future for humans in space now?
The Russians will still fly astronauts, including American ones, to the space station using Soyuz, which still lifts today on a variant of the R7 rocket that was used to place Sputnik and Gagarin in orbit. Other than that who knows, I believe this is a big mistake, we should be pushing forward into space, there are no frontiers left on this planet, we have plumbed the deepest oceans, climbed to the top of the highest mountain, Everest is now virtually a tourist attraction.
Once my ambition was to place foot on land no human had ever stood on before, now unless a new island appears from the sea that certainly is not going to happen.
We once, as a race, dreamed of new lands, of new challenges, not just physical but intellectual as well, we expanded across this globe like a virus, colonised new lands and subjugated new people.
We raped the lands of its riches and polluted everywhere we placed our mark. But is that not our destiny? Descended from animals our purpose was to breed and survive so that our progeny would carry on, to do this we had to live by the 'survival of the fittest' rule, the weak died so that the strong could live. As our population grew, more control and structure was needed to stop things becoming chaos, tribal leaders arose; normally the strongest bloke with the biggest stick, Then we discovered farming, this allowed us much more flexibility over our lives, the winter could survived with stored grain. As we grew more we had a surplus, this could be 'loaned' to others who needed it, to remember who we had loaned this surplus to, we needed records, hence writing began, once we had that, ideas could be written down and remembered, they could also be passed on much more accurately. Villages grew into towns, we needed more space and we pushed on until we met others, we either traded with or conquered them. The expansion continued, until compromises had to be met and that is where we are at today, becoming 'civilised' has allowed us to live together on this planet..... well almost, there still those who want more, still those who want to rule us all.
In the East the general public has now realised, with the help of global communication that it does not have to adhere to the strict rules most states have placed them under, therefore the unrest. It is not about freedom as such, I believe it is about want, they want to have the lifestyles they see on the television and to be honest, I can not blame them. In the West we have protected the under classes to the point where we have a substrata of moronic people who have no interest in anything but television, most have little interest in anything outside of their cosy little lives.
So what now for the population of this planet? Shall we stagnate here and wallow in our own filth? Or should we once again take that leap out into the unknown and become those pioneers that we once were?
The population on this planet is growing at a rate that will be unsustainable in the near future, do you really think those starving will be content to sit there while the west wastes so much? As global information becomes accessible to more and more people, the more situation will change, and to be honest I cant blame them.
Yet if we did redistribute food more evenly around the planet, the birth rate would climb higher, less people would die and the problem would grow exponentially at a frightening rate.
Humans have always been bred to survive, until relatively recently that instinct has been used to create soldiers, frontiersmen and explorers, even as recently as 40 years ago we wanted to be Astronauts, racing drivers or even explorers. I think the only thing left that kids aspire to these days is reality show plaything or rapper.
Becoming civilised has done us no favours in that respect.
We need to get off this planet, it is stifling us as a race.
Dreaming of going into Space was my dream, if I was told I could go tomorrow but I would die in the process, I would still go.
Looking back a this planet has to be the ultimate human experience,
(can someone lend me £175k so I go on Richard Branson's flight please?)
If is perfectly feasible to build a linear accelerator capable of launching ships into space at low cost, it is the initial cost and testing that puts off governments.
And Orion (google project Orion) was only dropped because of the radiation fear.
We must leave this planet before we all die in a war for food, or someone turns up and takes it from us.
