Space

I'ma bonafide space nut. I remember when I was a kid, I had the first space shuttle flights newspaper clippings all over my closet door. I was entranced by the thought of going into space. I look at it maybe as explorers did the oceans of the World. Can you imagine how many lives may have been lost, the ships caught in rogue waves, vicious storms and so on, all in the hopes of finding a 'new world'... Why is it so much different when there's an accident with a space vehicle. This type of explorations HAS to be filled with challenges and risk, otherwise it wouldn't be worth doing. Humans have conquered near every continent and ocean on the planet and now we head out to the stars, but sadly at a less than turtles pace.
I even believe, that human screw ups aside, the accident that mankind had endured with the shuttle launch (and landing), the accidents with the the very first space capsules, the near catastrophe of the Apollo mission. These folk all knew the risks, yes it's sad and kinda frightening, but imagine the impact on the families of those explorers of the new world and the exploration to find the North West passage. These were sacrifices by brave men (and on the shuttles women), that helped us learn lessons and helped us to push forward.
There were many tragedies on the way to space. Including a Russian cosmonaut in training, who was completing his last test, he would have been the first Russian in space, if it had not been for one simple mistake he made in his training, he tossed a cotton ball.
Valentin Bondarenko was completing one of the last tests in his training. He was to spend 15 days in an isolation chamber. All was well until one day the chamber erupted into flames with him still in it. Because the Russian government decided to keep this accident off record, it wasn't even known about to many people, even Russians, until 1986. Valentin had been wiping some condensation off his body, about to take some tests when he simply tossed the cotton ball in the isolation chamber, the cotton ball landed on a hot plate that was in the chamber for use in making himself food. The chamber was filled with pure oxygen and was a test to see who could handle the rigors of possible isolation in space, when the cotton ball hit the hot plate, it sparked and then it all when up in flames. Valentin was rushed to hospital but later died from his more than serious burns.

 The American space program also had a catastrophe with pure oxygen. Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and fellow astronaut Ed White II, all perished in the Liberty Bell I, when they too had an accident with pure oxygen inside their test command module. Sadly, emergency crews could not open the hatch in time to save either men. It would seem that this test module was filled with bare wires.... Electricity and pure oxygen don't mix well at all.... Lesson learned... The hard way.

I don't see these accidents as necessary, but accidents like these and the sacrifice by these brave men are what helped the space race evolve and taught us invaluable lessons. In short, like the many ships lost at sea in the effort to find the new World, there WILL be accidents along the way to space. Even the families of the shuttles catastrophes urged NASA and the US government to continue on with the shuttle programs despite the loss of their loved ones. They understood as their loved ones did that there were risks in this 'race'. I think these risks are acceptable and in a way crucial to our evolution on our way to the stars.

I often lament that we are too slow, that we're too far behind, that I wish we were years ahead in space travel. I fear that in my lifetime I won't get to see true space tourism, not just rich big whigs getting a week on the ISS (International Space Station).
I wonder had it not been for World War II if we might have been even further ahead than we are now. Grant it, Wernher Von Braun was making great strides in rocket technology, but it was really with the money from the Nazis that gave his work a real rocket boots forward. So it's hard to tell if we'd be further ahead or at the same spot.

People like Elon Musk and Bigelow Aerospace and ARCA are making serious dents in the 'space race'. NASA and the US government seriously dropped the ball many times with space exploration. Obviously, it's a high cost low return system, but since the US government has turned to the private sector for new and innovative initiatives, the private sector has responded in spades. Musk and his company has done in about a decade what NASA hasn't done in many decades and that's make space travel and business boom. Musk has made his profitable and reusable, some NASA and other space agencies have had a horrible time trying to attempt.
Musk has reusable rockets, Bigelow space has been promising a 'space hotel' for a couple of decades and is at least on the road with experiments now being conducted outside of the ISS. Virgin Galactic is working on a modest type of space tourism, but I think it's a rip off, you only get to fly to the edge of space and then you're on your way back to Earth, I mean, if you got that kind of money to piss away, good on ya, but it's nothing I'd save up for. But, I guess you have to start somewhere. Recent presidents have made Mars the goal, although some believe that setting up bases on the Moon might be a better launching point for Mars. The amount of data and information gleaned from Mars, not only from the rovers but from the probes in Mars' orbit have been groundbreaking and have been setting the bar for what needs to happen next.
Projects and programs aim to send new missions to Mars. Again, Musk has his sights set on Mars as well, even with plans to set up some kind of base.
For robotics, the Mars landers have been operating (one of them near flawlessly for 14 years) for years, when they were only expected to last months.

New robots are being designed as I type this to explore the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. These 'ice worlds' are known to have liquid oceans, these oceans have existed for millions of years and who knows what kind of life may have evolved there. Our notion that life needs sunlight to survive has been shattered with the findings of life on Earth in the most inhospitable environments. Plans for micro sats to be shot into deep space and explore for us are near completion.
Advances in ion propulsion and other propulsion engines are quickly coming up for use in space and will help pave the way for us to journey to other star systems with much greater speeds than what we have now. .

For years the people of Earth have marveled at the wonders of deep space that we've been gifted from the incredible Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

The shimmering colors visible in this Hubble Space Telescope image show off the remarkable complexity of the Twin Jet Nebula, or PN M2-9.

When Hubble was first launched in April 1990, once situated at it's orbit, the lens came off and they went to calibrate the cameras of the telescope, but were shocked and confused when none of the photos would come clear. It would seem that in the polishing process of Hubble's main lens, there was a tiny flaw and this rendered the telescope next to useless.
A mission by space shuttle Discovery went up and space cowboy Story Muskgrave was Hubble's savior as he captured the Hubble Space Telescope and they fit it with corrected optics. We've been in awe ever since.
Sadly I heard the other day that the HST's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed yet again and now won't be launched until sometime in 2020 (it's last delay pushed it to 2019)... JWST will be an upgrade from HST's now aged technology. We'll be able to see the beginning of the Universe in better detail, peer at the center of black holes and find new Earth like exoplanets in galaxies near and far away.

The James Webb Space Telescope now set to launch in May 2020

Just in my lifetime (from 1972) our understanding of our solar system, galaxy and the universe has grown in leaps and bounds. 

To think that decades ago no one even thought that the universe had anything but stars and the notion of other life out there? Forget about it. Even just a couple of decades ago, I was telling my Father that in 10 years time they'd find liquid or frozen water on Mars and in a few years after that, they did.

Now it's not IF there's life out there, but WHEN will we find it and I do believe it will be in my lifetime.

Space and the Universe we live in was the final nail in the coffin as far as religion for me. Understanding the 'big bang' theory was enough for me to shuck off any notions that the bible had about our origins. 

There's always of course question of what happened before the big bang and no one can answer that yet, but new theories and greater space probes will no doubt unlock that secret in good time,. Some theories suggest that Universes are constantly popping in and out of existence. It could very well be that our Universe could 'pop' out of existence at any moment, giving way for a new Universe to begin.

There's been some signs that at the furthest edges of our Universe lay massive 'structures' that no one yet knows what these may be. 

NASA

Because of the shuttle era I became a huge 'NASA Nut'. While some people shit all over NASA and the work they do, I am a big defender of NASA and the missions they've pulled off. Including the Moon landings, which of course, like the 'flat-eathers' movement (akin to a bowel movement), there's plenty of jerks out there that have such little faith in human-kind that they do not believe that NASA has ever landed on the Moon. There's a wave out there that do not even believe there are working rovers on Mars and even more shocking and ridiculous is the movement that doesn't believe that there are even any probes in space whatsoever. 

In my employed years, when I was making decent money I bought a lot of NASA merch. From patches to hats, sweatshirts and mugs to a replica of the space shuttle Discovery.

Replica of the space shuttle Discovery

We should take great pride as Canadians for the work that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has done over the decades.

We even built one of the World first delta-winged interceptor aircraft, that shocked the Americans so much that for some reason the whole concept was scraped, the models and prototypes smashed to a billion pieces and the plans shredded. This happened so quickly that it made head spins and a massive chunk of the team that planned and built the Avro Arrow were hired on by NASA to work on the shuttle program.

We also made the Canada Space Arm, which was in service on many of the shuttles and a new version is now used on the International Space Station. 

Canada has our very own astronaut hero Chris Hatfield who became famous World wide for his gravity free acoustic rendition of David Bowie's 'Space oddity' while aboard the International Space Station. Chris has flown two space shuttle mission and was the first Canadian to be 'commander' of the ISS.

I dream of going to space, but it's a pie in the sky wish. Several factors will keep me from my dream, money and health.

It costs millions of dollars to be a 'guest' on the ISS, so that's right out and then because spending time in space has a serious effect on our human skeletal system, in that our bones degrade, having the arthritis I have wouldn't be a great combo.

I have said that I'd totally volunteer to be shot off in to space and just keep going until I or the craft expire. Scenes like that from the movie 'Contact', where Jodie Foster's character is awestruck and brought to tears as she witness' some of the universes wonders with her own eyes.

Just imagine seeing a nebula or a galaxy with your own eyes, not a photo, not a video or graphic, but there in front of you. 

Ahh "to dream the impossible dream"

The 'Horsehead nebula'