Space, The Final Frontier

Like, I suspect, many of you, I wanted to be an astronaut as a child (I recall that chronologically this came after I wanted to be a train engineer, and before I wanted to be a brain surgeon). I was born three years-and-a-few months before Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon (or, for the Capricorn One-inspired conspiracy theorists among you, a Hollywood movie set). And as a child, I played over and over again (ask my poor mom) a 45 rpm pressing of the recorded conversations between the Apollo 11 LEM (lunar excursion module, also known as LM), CSM (command/service module) and Mission Control back on Earth. Almost forty years later, I can still remember most of it.

Alas, the combination of weight- and height-challenged body and vision-challenged eyes dashed my aspirations, but I still closely follow the programs of NASA and other government-sponsored and private enterprises (join me in keeping your fingers crossed that NASA will be able to figure out how to get the Mars Rover Opportunity un-stuck from the sand dune that currently mires it!). Two recent bits of news have particularly amped my excitement. First, scientists now strongly suspect that the presence of large amounts of methane and formaldehyde on Mars, notably within the equatorial region, is indicative of the presence of life, due to formaldehyde's relatively short few-hour half-life. Also, astronomers believe they've for the first time been able to capture an image of an extra-solar (i.e. outside our solar system) planet.

Pardon me while I step on my soapbox for a moment, but as an admitted avid environmentalist I believe the human species could well use an opportunity to adopt a more inclusive and less arrogant view of its place in the universe's ecosystem. Breakthroughs such as the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph could prove to be just the ticket; I'm especially intrigued by their potential to shake certain fundamentalist religions' belief systems to their very foundations.