exploring space

I've never been all that enthused about 'manned' space travel. (I guess we'll have to start calling it 'human' space travel.)  I'm more intrigued-- as I think most people are-- by these unmanned ('unhumanned'?) probes of Mars, Neptune, and beyond. The images coming back from these things are incredible! And I don't care about the International Space Station at all. It just seems like an accident waiting to happen-- they've already had a few close calls-- and at some point it will.

On the other hand, we'll be coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing next year. Why haven't we been back? I think we should try to get back there every ten years or so, just to keep our hand in, so to speak, just to keep being able to do it. And at some point Mars-- maybe by midcentury? That's clearly the next step. But over the long haul-- the next four billion years or so before Earth becomes a cinder as the sun expands outward-- our artificial intelligence progeny will be better able to endure the physical rigors of space; they'll be designed to be.