The fork in the road

Humanity is standing at a fork in the road of time.  A choice that will be looked back upon for the significance of choosing rightly or will be buried under the sands of time with the rest of us.  A choice of maintaining the unnatural view that earth is the center of the universe or to accept the fact that the earth is just a little island in a great archipelago.

What other islands are there?  The moon, a three day journey hovers in the night sky with preserved footprints from a generation that dared to go.  A reminder, that great heights once scaled can become beyond reach.  Mars, a journey of some 6 months, a world with ice, an earth like day, and mineral resources to create familiar settings.  The moons of Jupiter and Saturn lay beyond.  In the spaces between, Asteroids and comets fly by like golden nuggets in the stream of the universe awaiting for the prospector’s faith to reveal their value.

We can go.  We can build ships to go to these worlds. Build structures to protect and support life.  Build systems that would allow for us to thrive there.  We could learn to make productive use of the resources of our system.  Develop the technology to live on other worlds and even between those worlds.  A huge challenge that is worthy of us to inspire and unleash our potential as only a nearly impossible challenge can.

Then once we have develop the confidence, technology, and, more importantly, the right perspective, we will be able to take that next step of sending life to another string of islands in another system.  A process that would take centuries, but once begun would lead to the populating of life throughout the universe.  And people would look back on this time with awe and disbelief that we could have done something other than accept this challenge.

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