Immortality and the art of conversation.

Have you ever thought about the fact that you could already be immortal?
In a way most of us who use modern technology are, if you have ever been on television or the radio, ever used a mobile phone or a computer then the odds are that your image or voice will be floating through space forever.
Ok, it will get fainter and weaker the further it goes, but it will go on forever, until one day an alien race picks it up, now at first they may not understand exactly what it means, but eventually either they, or another race, will translate your image or voice in an intelligible piece of data.

What then will they think? Think about the inconsequential drivel most of us churn out in the average phone conversation, all that is drifting through the universe, million upon millions of words saying nothing, nothing at all. The communication mediums that we all have at our fingertips are really wasted on nonsense 99% of the time. Even at work, how much of our time on the phone is spent talking about work? Not a much as you think.

Before radio communication writing letters was the only viable way of getting information information between any people separated by large distances, in those, most of the time, they had to be thought out very carefully as you could not correct a mistake for some time, if you got it wrong it could be weeks before you received a reply and realised your mistake.
With the internet people feel they can put down their thoughts without thinking too much about what they have written or even the effect it might have on others. I have been guilty of this myself once or twice, normally after a few beers.

Now our words are passing out through the outer reaches of space, my first CB transmission is just passing Delta Eridani 29.5 light years away, I wonder just what anyone there would make of my rambling chat about BSA motorbikes?

Every little piece of chat, every bit of gossip, even singing happy birthday down your mobile will be winging its way across space in all directions. One day someone or something may be listening to what you said, or seeing your image on a tv screen, what do you think they will make of it?

50 years since Yuri Gagarin leapt into space.

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.