Back From Beyond

After 13 days spent in orbit, the space shuttle Discovery touched down at Cape Canaveral earlier today, marking the end of only the second shuttle flight since Columbia blew up on re-entry in 2003. NASA are said to be delighted with the results of the flight, proclaiming it "as good a mission as we've ever flown". With the shuttle's problems fixed, and the mission having carried out needed repairs to the International Space Station (ISS), building work can resume.

The ISS is man's permanent manned presence in space, but it is incomplete, with a half dozen modules still to be taken up and attached. Orginally planned to have a full time crew of 6, it is doubtful whether the actual number of staff will now exceed the 3 currently up there (the shuttle having left behind the German astronaut Thomas Reiter to increase the complement to 3 from now on). In less than a month the shuttle Atlantis will blast off to continue construction work.

I love anything to do with space exploration, its not just the geek in me that is awed by the cool factor of robots rolling around on other planets, or people living in glorified tin cans in orbit. I'm not a man of faith, I have no belief in a higher power or an afterlife, but what I do believe in is humanity. I truly believe that if mankind has a manifest destiny, some higher calling, then it is out there, somewhere... To put it another way, I refer to a famous quote by a Russian scientist by the name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who said:

"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one can not live in a cradle forever!"

There will doubtless be other failures and setbacks in mankinds exploration of space, and there will be more deaths too. But none of that has ever stopped humanity from doing something before. I like to think that I'll be alive to see mankind begin to colonise the Moon in earnest, and perhaps if I'm lucky Mars too. I'd love to be around to see humans break the light speed barrier, because we will, somehow. Sure there's some rule of astrophysics that claims it is impossible to do so, but that rule was written over 50 years ago, and rules are made to be broken. Someone will find a way to do it But I don't think I'll be alive to see that.