Greetings and welcome.
I have always had a love of science and all things scientific. I was six years old when the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I still remember vividly the excitement I felt watching Armstrong step on to "Lunafirma". I knew at that moment that over a quarter of a million miles away something historic was happening, and I knew that I wanted to do something similar.
I followed the remaining Apollo missions, the Skylab missions, the Viking missions to Mars, the shuttle, ISS, Hubble, Galileo, Cassini...the list goes on and on. And last night, May 25, 2008, I watched as a group of fellow geeks waited for word that the Phoenix Lander touched down on the northern polar region of Mars. And 39 years after the first words from the moon reached earth, I still felt sense of excitement at what was happening. And I was envious of the people sitting in that control room at JPL watching their computer screens, waiting for a signal from a computer that had traveled nine months through space to reach its destination. What a great job that must be. Damn...
With all of this in mind, I would like to start a discussion on the way science may effect the way humans live in the future. This may sound like a discussion on science fiction, but I am a follower of people like Robert Zubrin and Ray Kurzweil. These scientists see a rapid expansion of knowledge and an eventual move off planet. The expansion of knowledge is obvious in the rapid advances made in mapping the human genome. And the move off planet will start as soon as big business finds a way to exploit the natural resources of the solar system instead of the earth's. (Or after the earths resources are no longer profitable to exploit).
Please contribute freely. Tell me when I am out of my mind. Add plausible ideas. And by all means, let's not limit these discussions to space exploration. There is plenty going in the fields of medicine, energy development, aerospace, physics and other disciplines of science.
Enjoy...P
