Space

Like a lot of people, I love Star Trek. Granted I was a little late, but I enjoyed binge watching both the original series and Next Generation on Netflix. Some of the original series episodes were a bit campy, but both series managed to capture the awe of discovery (something that all of the Star Trek movies failed to do).

In the television programs, space exploration came at a time when there was no war or poverty on Earth. I don't think it was ever explicitly said, but in Star Trek: First Contact, it is heavily implied that humanity reached its next golden age with the discovery of interstellar travel (a warp drive). Now I can't promise a new golden age will come with a push for space exploration, but nothing united our country quite like the space race during the Cold War.

Aside from the numerous technological innovations that were made during the space race, mankind has always had a spirit of pioneering and expanding. Speaking more dire, as the world becomes more and more advance everyone is going to want better things. While I may sound like Malthus, the world is only going to have more and more people in it, and a lot of us like our space.

I am not exactly sure what happened to President Bush's call for a mission to Mars, but I haven't seen much progress aside from the two Mars rovers. According to NASA, they are working on sending a manned mission to Mars by 2030. Granted Mars is much farther than the moon, but I really hope they can make this time table. I suspect that once we start sending humans to Mars versus robots, our imaginations will be running wild. Many people will point to a common enemy as a force that can united different people, but I believe that a common goal can be just as uniting. Just as with the space race, I think the yearn to populate another world will be a chance to united our species unlike any other endeavor before it.

Hopefully by the end of this century, we'll have started colonizing the martian surface. At the very least, if we can start bringing in resources from space, the Malthusian prophecy may be averted yet again. Hopefully Malthus can be proven wrong for all time once we successfully establish the first martian settlement. In the meantime, I hope more attention can be given to the space program. Sometimes mankind just needs a little inspiration to believe that the impossible can be possible.