So, it would seem from reading the popular media, that the public's general interest in space travel is on the rise. With the Ansari X-Prize, Virgin Galactic, several countries wanting to return to the Moon and us constantly firing cylinders at Mars, it seems that expanding into the galaxy may one day not be science fiction.

It seems to me, that the hardest part of the problem with space flight is stopping people dying. The space vehicles the men and women who do this are brilliant enough to construct are well engineered and incredibly well tested. I was wondering if manned space exploration is just the next step after exploring the globe. I decided that this wasn't the case simply because of the speed with which you die when you fuck up. When sailing the globe 16th century style and you fucked up, it took a while before you died. A person can be resourceful and solve a problem given a couple of days. It is likely to be much harder when you're hurtling through space in a tin can that will explosively decompress in 55 seconds.

So while they're busy defrosting Kubrick to fake up some more lunar landings; I do actually think that one day we will make it into space on a major scale. Then we just have to build that Dyson Sphere...