Time to seriously begin the second new age of exploration off planet - Time to colonize space"The idea of space travel or humans living in space dates to at least 1610 after the invention of the telescope when German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote to Italian astronomer Galileo: “Let us create vessels and sails adjusted to the heavenly ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes. In the meantime, we shall prepare, for the brave sky-travellers, maps of the celestial bodies.”
Time to meet the future by creating it - Driving it into space
Time to extend the borders of Human limitation off planet
Time to "Explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”{Star Trek}
But what is the best way of doing this Colonizing nearby places such as the Moon and Mars
Why bother with such a slow program on planets whose atmospheres are so unfriendly, that can more simply be explored by robotics,
and as of now offer little of value
Isn't it time to build the proverbial 'star ship', a massive city size self-sufficient space colony, capable of sustaining thousands of
scientist/explorers on a permanent mission of space exploration
For these brave pioneers outer space will be their new home - The new StarShip will actually be Colony 1 in a program whose sole
goal will by exploration and coloization of space.
Time to bring Science Fiction back home to its Scientific base
"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."
- Stephen Hawking, Astrophysicist
"Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole."
- William Burroughs, Author
“Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
― Carl Sagan