Benefits and the future

A: What do you reckon is the greatest benefit to come out of the space age to date?

B: That’s a bit of a tough one. There’s been so many, in medicine, in engineering, in electronics and, I guess, in knowledge generally.

A: Yeah, that’s true. But, there must be one special benefit that, sort of, stands out?

B: When I think about it, the thing that has impacted over a whole host of disciplines is miniaturization.

A: Hey! Yeah! That’s it. Everything about us today is miniaturized; our cell phones, our computers; watches, things around the home and all the electronic gear.

B: It certainly has had a big flow-on effect but, couldn’t we have done that without going into space?

A: Probably we could have but, it was space that gave us the motivation, and incentive, to do it now. Without that, it might have taken another twenty years to reach the same level.

B: So, where do we go in the future? Are we headed for a future like the “Star Wars” films?

A: I certainly hope not. Those films were mainly an exercise in special effects where the producer just transferred all the human weaknesses to every other galaxy in space.

B: That’s pretty much on the mark. But, there were a lot of real interesting gadgets that they thought up in the movie.

A: Yes, there isn’t any argument that technology will come up with many new innovations, and ideas, that we don’t have today.

B: What we are talking about doesn’t really address the question of space-where do we go how far can we go-why do we need to go?

A: Obviously, we have to crawl before we can walk; and walk before we can run! We will be a long time just exploring our solar system before we can think about another galaxy.

B: Our solar system is but one in the millions of systems in our galaxy alone, let alone, even worrying about what’s in another galaxy.

A: So, what do you think will be our first target planet to explore?

B: The only one that is at all reasonable has to be Mars. It is the next closest one after Venus even though it is going to be mighty cold at minus 63 degrees.

A: What’s wrong with Venus? If that is closer, why don’t we go there first?

B: Venus might be a touch hot for the likes of us humans. It’s about 480 degrees centigrade on the surface and, it rotates in the opposite direction to all the other planets.