Space... The Final Frontier...
Its official Pluto is no longer a planet, it's a dwarf. On the one hand I thought oh well, its only a name, this revelation will pass us by. But then i thought well hold on a minute, what about all those text books which clearly depict Pluto as a planet.
Now ok, in the days of Galileo we all thought the world was flat, but we all soon adjusted to the idea of it being round. But to be told something was something, that it clearly seemed to be, is not what it is, but something else now. I'm at a loss to concur, clearly Pluto looks like a planet, not that it's easy to see mind, maybe it doesn't exist at all. After al how many people have seen it? I know of no one that's ever seen it. Not that that's a prerequisite for its existence. I rely on others to confirm this. However, even when I analyse the Hubble pictures of Pluto, I'm still considering it to be a wayward cloud.
I might well imagine that people have seen all manner of things they thought to be true, but just weren't. So how does calling Pluto a dwarf reflect its true identity, I'm not sure, does it really matter? After al according to scientists it's the most in-hospitable place in the Solar System, so i don't see humans landing there in the far future, if ever.
In the immutable words of William Shatner, 'Space, the final frontier'. It cast an eerie but exciting glow of possibility for us all, an aeon of adventure and new discovery. But what now? I think our love affair with space has diminished considerably. We are all to often left with that sinking feeling of the impossibility. By that I mean, that we are constrained by the sheer enormity of the task in hand. We just about have the technology to land on the moon, than to go much further. We would require a huge leap in engineering to enable that, which presently doesn't seem to be anywhere on the horizon.
Now I'm no scientist, and hell these possibilities may well be just around the corner. But the current sea of thought is generally a robotic future of space travel. In other words not to dissimilar to what we have been seeing ever since the first Voyager took off. The next generation of manned flights post 2010 will be of almost identical design to that of the Apollo missions, i.e. booster and module (capsule).
Now frankly, where is the excitement in that? Has technology gone in reverse? I doubt it, but the psychology of excitement in these projects has certainly dwindled as a result. The Space Shuttle was seen as a marvel of space engineering. It was a new modern looking craft that inspired greater possibilities than before. Now to go back to a booster and module technology would surely seem to be a backward step, psychologically at least.
Now sure, in reality the Shuttle seemingly achieved a lot less than the Apollo missions. In less, I refer to our expectancy, no doubt it achieved enormous things for the scientific community. Of course this revival of an old technology wont be the same. No doubt these rockets and capsules will be more efficient, responsive and adjustable than their predecessors. But the fact still remains that in general, space technology hasn't changed for almost 40 years. Maybe we expect too much of technology, I think that is true somewhat, indeed we are in an era where we are seeing the limitations of technology. This is why I currently lack enthusiasm for future space projects.
As with computers that are now seeing the limits of silicon chips, we are seeing the limits of rocket technology. We need a new form of energy that can harness far higher speeds than ever imagined. I have no idea where this will come from, no more than my Grandfather knew where nuclear energy came from, when it did. But unless we have a major breakthrough in newer unimaginable technologies I can't see the world jumping up and down for space travel in the near future.
Sure, man landing on Mars will be seen as a great feat of human endeavour, much like Edmund Hillary reaching the peak of Everest under great odds. However the achievement would be purely individual, something that takes us not much further than we already knew. But reaching more faraway planets within our Solar System, albeit merely orbiting around them, would be far more exciting. Having coloured high definition pictures streamed on the Internet live, 24 hours a day. This is where, 'Space the final frontier', begins to emanate once again.....
