What’s so thrilling about space travel?
Lots of news from outer space last week. Somewhere at the back end of the solar system, a huge, icy new planet is lurking, behind Pluto, which, according to the panic merchants, may come crashing by around the end of April - yes, this coming April - and wipe us out. Worse still, we are filling space with a gazillion bits of debris and satellites, which will eventually start colliding, until one day, said Nasa employee Donald Kessler, back in 1978, anything that we send up there will be "sandblasted into smithereens".
What is so thrilling and romantic about space travel and exploration? I am bored stiff with it, and fairly terrified, and what good does it do me if there's another planet out there? I am stuck on this one. Soon there are going to be squabbles about whose space junk smacked into whose satellite/spaceship/chunk of outrageously expensive equipment at 30,000mph; was it an accidental bit of whirling crap, or did the Russians/Chinese/Americans do it on purpose? Then it will be armed conflict and the third world/space war, as if we didn't have enough trouble down here already, with our relatively small wars, displaced millions, nuclear risks, mishaps and general wreckage.
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