Space: The Final Frontier
"its my life...don't you forget...it never ends"
Space is the final and ever existent frontier for Mankind and all sentient life in the Universe.
Ironically, the first life form to emerge from the protective atmospheric envelope of Earth was a dog in 1957, named 'Laika'. Shortly thereafter, Yuri Gagarin pierced the veil and became the first man to enter the domain of space and orbit the planet (in 1hr, 48 minutes) in 1961.
Suceeding missions have taken Man to the moon and to every planet in the solar system by way of unmanned spacecraft, except for Pluto. A mission to Pluto, though, has been intitiated under the title 'New Horizons' and will make its closest approach on July 14th, 2015.
Terrestrial spacecraft have landed on Venus, Mars, as well as a few of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. A permanent moon base is being planned to be in continual operation by 2024.
Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, now 8.7 and 6.5 billion miles from Earth, respectively, have both exited the solar system on a trajectory into deep space.
More than 4,500 satellites have been launched into earth's orbit since 1957, with nearly 1,000 operating today, providing humanity with weather, climatic, telecommunications, optical, navigation as well as global business and financial links to the planet's surface.
The Salyut, Skylab, Mir and International Space Station (ISS) have been built, have operated and have orbited the Earth, the latter of which continues in operation today. The longest a human being has lived continuously in space has been 14 months aboard the ISS.
SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been engaged, since 1960, in attempting to detect radio signals from space in its search for any signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in our Universe, but to no avail.
In the last decade, astronomers have detected nearly 200 worlds orbiting nearby stars. As of April, 2008, 287 planets, or "exoplanets" appear to be common in our galactic neighborhood. Using the Keck Interferometer, NASA's Kepler Mission (scheduled to launch in 2009), followed by SIM PlanetQuest and eventually by the Terrestrial Planet Finder- with an imaging power 100 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope- the search for Earth like worlds in the far reaches of space blazes onward. The detection of carbon dioxide, water, methane and ozone will determine if life on other worlds (as we know it) exists.
Back in 1961, University of California Santa Cruz astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the infamous "Drake Equation", which stipulated that there are an estimated 10,000 planets containing intelligent life with the possible capability of communicating with Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy alone.
In light of the huge, vast distances of space, it has been postulated that further human space travel will never be able to do more than achieve Earth orbit and at best visit (and temporarily live) on our closest solar system planets and moons.
To assist in this quest, development and use of anti-gravitic energy and craft will most assuredly contribute greatly to efficient space travel within our own solar system- and perhaps aways beyond. Anti-gravitic technology will similiarly assist the human enterprise on Earth in its desperate attempt to wean itself off the current antiquated and environmentally destructive hydrocarbon economy.
Astrobiology, or exobiology, the interdisiplinary profession that combines astronomy, biology and geology in its quest to discover the origin, distribution and evolution of Life in the Universe, is now beginning to entertain the idea that non-chemical, interdimensional, advanced alien/extraterrestrial intelligence may similiarly exist beyond the physical space/time parameters of ordinary material life as we know it.
Indeed, extrapolating evolutionary trajectories, human beings are to evolve from dense meat/flesh into spirit, a dimension of life beyond current 3rd dimensional space/time. This will permit a mode of interstellar travel infinitely beyond the material constrictions of the speed of light, per se' (at 186,000 miles/second), and propell us into a domain where vast distances of intergalactic space can be arrived at almost instantaneously. This new level of existence will entail, perhaps, massless particle energy, universal holography, transcendence of consciousness and levels of physics, intelligence, energy and life ALL coming together to form the basis of a Unified Field Theory theorized by Albert Einstein. But, then again, perhaps this level of life would be better left to the auspices of advanced civilizations- the primary of which is to soon to descend upon Earth, as per Holy Scripture, in the not to distant future.
An alien/extraterrestrial/advanced civilization known as 'the Kingdom of God' in the great monotheistic religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is, in fact, on the books (or described in the books- no pun intended). Holy Scripture is, in reality, a blueprint for the coming of extraterrestrail life to Earth.
To quote the Holy Koran in Islam, "All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Worlds", indicating multiple celestial bodies and even multiple universes and/or extra-dimensions of existence within the full spectrum of what is known as 'Life' in the Universe.
Intelligence to the power of Infinity.
Steve Jones
aka- Jonas the Prophet
Zermatt, SWITZERLAND
Website: http://oocities.com/jedicommandone
