A few guys that I get together with on Sundays and I have decided to go through the book "The Purpose Driven Life" together. While I was reading one of the chapters it occurred to me that in our galaxy we are essentially reaching the conclusion that Earth is the only planet that has life on it. What is interesting to me is that God created our galaxy and only put people on one planet and yet this planet is not the center/focal point of the solar system, nor is it the biggest planet it is simply the one that God decided to make inhabitable. I couldn't help but think this was an intentional move to help drive home the point that each of us individually are not the center of the universe. God created us to be in this universe and has a purpose for us beyond our selfish pursuits. This led me to start thinking a little bit about space travel and exploration. I'm willing to bet it costs billions of dollars everytime we want to send a shuttle with some people on it into space. I understand that people are intrigued by space because it is so big and so unknown and people have a adventuresome spirit. However, I guess I don't really understand what they hope to accomplish with these space flights. They haven't come remotely close to finding another planet that could have people live on it. They really have only found out a little bit about the other planets in our solar system and yet people are probably aspiring to leave our galaxy and see what else there is. Everyone is entitle to their own interests and pursuits, but the fact that our Government is paying our money for this to happen is pretty frustrating to me. Basically space exploration has done nothing for the good of our country. We beat Russia to the moon but I've yet to see the trophy or the cash prize that we got for that accomplishment, oh wait, like all other space flights we probably got nothing for it. Given that we live in a country that deals with issues like poverty, healthcare problems, social security nightmares, war with other parts of the world, corporate corruption, crime and all the other problems we can't figure out a solution for, should we really be pumping billions of dollars into the hobby of a handful of scientists? I am pretty sure that NASA works on other things besides exploring space, they probably have a hand in rocket based weaponry of some sort. If they are contributing in other areas then by all means, fund those other areas. But space travel doesn't seem to have much to offer society as a whole therefore I believe our government should leave it to the private sector to pursue as they so desire.
Besides if we learned everything about space, the whole science fiction genre of movies and books would probably dwindle because their room for implanting there creativity into the gap of the unkown would be eliminated. On that note and in closing, in the 1998 hit movie Armageddon did anyone else find it interesting that a meteor the size of Texas was coming at the Earth, and they were able to blast it into two nicely cut pieces with a nuke simply by digging down 800 feet? The distance East to West of Texas is 773 Miles, and North to South its 801 miles. I really don't think 800 feet of drilling would do the trick but the drama and special effects of the movie helped us ignore the physics of the situation. Credit for this observation goes to my physics and chemistry teacher Preston Q. Boomer (aka P.Q. Le Boom, aka Boom).
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