"Just last night I got to thinking,
while sheep cross fence were winking.
The stars in the sky,
so please my eye,
I wondered if there were a reason.
As I lay calm in comfortable bed,
blanket bov my body and pillow neath my head.
I feel it's right to mention,
that I asked myself a question.
Why is it they're there just teasin?
We've been to mountain top,
and between islands hopped.
Dived the ocean's blue,
Hell, we even flew!
We've braved squall and monsoon,
we've even put a man on the moon...
But I wonder, what's keeping us here?
Is it reluctance from failure or fear?
The stars in the sky,
they so catch my eye!
They're beautiful in their argent glow,
maybe, one day, we'll go to and fro.
It's getting late now, and I'm ready to sleep.
I nod my head, and signal the sheep.
Letting wonders cease as I come to rest,
from such concerns I mentally divest.
One day our galaxy with life will teem,
until that day comes, I can still dream."
There comes a time when all people reach a point in life, the dilemma of dilemmas, and it is an inevitable point. This dilemma is so weighty because it is a simple decision, about a simple thing. If that may seem backwards to you, you might be right. While a complex decision can be difficult to understand, it has sufficient detail to give a good idea of the results. However, with a simple decision, things are much more difficult to predict. This decision is the decision between pursuing your hopes and dreams, or giving them up to focus on more important things. Many people make different choices for many different reasons, but the end results are usually the same regardless of reason. Either you give up your dreams and never achieve them or wait so long that it becomes less enjoyable than it would have been, or you keep your dreams and end up not focusing on what's important, and do not have the benefit of a covered survival.
I think too many people have been giving up their dreams recently. It's a sad sign indeed when the people who are most doggedly pursuing such an emotional topic are scientists and people out to make money. We've lost a part of humanity in the process somewhere, a little piece that fell off because it got nudged the right way or intentionally removed like a stray thread. We've lost the very drive which brought us up to this level; the drive to fulfill dreams and explore. Space is the last thing on the minds of the people right now, but it's our reluctance to take the next step that has caused so many problems.
When we look at something such as space travel, we tend to think it's exorbitantly expensive and nigh impossible, however that shouldn't stop us from investing in it. Many of the social problems of today could be fixed by technology developed explicitly for space colonization. If we were to set up a moon or mars colony, for example, we would need a way to transport sufficient supplies to the colony, a way to provide medical assistance that doesn't require a 3 day round trip, housing which is disaster resistant(impact or storms) and is light and easy to set up(we have to get it there remember?), manufacturing and resource gathering technology to reap the benefits of colonization, we would need agricultural technology which could operate in inhospitable environments which have low supply of water, and speaking of water that's somewhat important too.
However, while the cost of developing for space travel is oh-so-high, what we do not realize is the sheer impact of these technologies. For example, the medical technology required for the trip and colonization would have to treat injuries, administer dosages of medication, treat individuals for exposure, and be able to do all this on limited staff, resources, and energy. In other words, we need automated computerized diagnostics and other such systems which can be applied in hospitals to reduce the cost of health care. Another excellent example is the agricultural technology needed; by using aeroponic growing systems, we can put the farm directly inside the city, which would cut down on fuel costs and labor costs of transporting that food from the farm(in an area which risks drought no-less) to the cities which need it.
We can't bring giant assembly lines worth of material to colonies with us, so we need technology which is able to gather and process resources on-site into goods(which are effectively compressed) that can be used there or transported back to Earth. As such, rapid manufacturing technology is of pivotal potency to the real world; rapid manufacturing is a different manufacturing method which effectively creates an item using base components, and is able to create any variety of machine or component that can be programmed into it. This "One unit" system would drop the cost of entering into business by a huge degree; you won't need to buy $50,000 worth of machinery to enter business. Communities could even allow public use at resource and energy cost. The same technology which would allow us to create this technology would also give us near-perfect recycling ability; if the system can assemble items with base components, it can disassemble items into base components.
Energy technologies to be used on the trip need to require less mass, so as to prevent reducing the ship's momentum, and they also need to be powerful enough to last long trips without refueling(in whatever fashion they may). These could be implemented on Earth as well, giving us cheaper, cleaner energy(in space, the less byproduct you make, the less you have to scrub). Even electronics would be vastly improved, because by using the best tool for the job, we would likely move forward from electronics into new levels of control such as spintronics, photronics, or boptronics (Electron spin computing, light computing, and bioorganic computing respectively).
That's just the benefit from the technologies we need to go somewhere else, and doesn't include the impact of discoveries made at the somewhere else. New types and alloys of metals naturally occurring(so we don't have to expend energy to make them), new plants and animals which may lead to cures for cancer and AIDS, and if we're lucky, new kinds of sentient life. If we can trade for their technology, we don't have to spend as much money researching and developing that new application. Space represents the next age for mankind, but we have a choice before we go.
When it comes to be our time to enter the next frontier, we will be faced with a simple choice; Do we play along, or do we keep fighting amongst ourselves. Mind you that we can never divorce ourselves from war(important to note), as it will be necessary at some point in the future as we may meet beings which are not-so-peaceful. Those who do not learn the Art of War are doomed to fall to those who do. United we stand, Divided we fall; if this is true for cultures and alliances, then it must be true for humankind as a whole once we voyage into space and interact with other species.
I've been through the dilemma I began this piece with, and I know what my choice on the matter is. So for now I wait and watch, and hope someday we will become ready of our own natural course, or I can help bring us up to bat.
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