The Final Frontier

If you look up at the sky tonight and squint really hard, there's no chance at all that you'll see the New Horizons space probe as it speeds along on its nine-year journey to Pluto. I mean, it's already passed the moon, and it will reach Jupiter in a little over a year. Every time I hear of the length of these exploratory missions, it always makes me take a step back and think about just how enormously big space is. This is the fastest probe Earth has ever launched, and it's still going to be nine years before it reaches the end of our solar system. This is mind-boggling, but compared to how long it took Voyager to get where it was going, this is also a great advancement in technology.

Who knows, one of these days, humans may be taking a three-o'clock flight to Pluto just to check it out. That would be fun, I think. Ever since my brother got me hooked on Star Trek as a kid, I've thought it would be cool to be in space. Maybe one day, we'll have most of the problems down here taken care of, so we can turn our collective eyes upward. What have we got to lose? Even if it's decades before it happens, think of the scientific advancements that we use in everyday life that came because of the moon missions. Having a seemingly impossible goal is a good thing for mankind.

All of this talk is making me want to go visit the Air & Space Museum, which I think I'll be doing this weekend, mainly because my parents and Annie are coming to visit later today. Another excuse to go into the city. Yes!