IF THERE’S A –THERE- SOMEWHERE…OUT THERE
(…will we be able to get to it…from here?)

Earth, is crowding up fast, and in another decade or so there will be some 9 billion of us swarming all over it, like a plague of locusts exhausting the available resources needed to sustain us here.

Which may explain the growing interest in the private sector to become more involved in projects to further explore the commercial potentials of Space. If there’s a –there- somewhere…out there…the question is still: will we be able to get to it…from here? Maybe…because technology is now allowing us to get a better look at other parts of this solar system we’re in; and, to toy with the idea not just of visiting them, but to also explore their possibilities for accommodating our excess numbers for new extraterrestrial colonies…of humans.

Some planning for such a future is already being made. One of the first steps in that direction being to come up with ways and means to “mine” asteroids not just for their mineral contents, but for that life-sustaining element we call…water. If we can figure out how to milk that critical resource from all that icy and rocky debris whizzing around in Space, then we’ll be well on the way of establishing such latter-day versions of Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth Rock plantations…on the Moon…on Mars…or on other yet to be found planets.

The big question is: Can we make it happen before we literally eat ourselves out of our house and home planet? Of course a natural event like the Medieval Age’s –Black Plague – might make it all moot, by bringing our numbers back down to a sustainable level (as Malthus foretold). Given our reproductive proclivities, however, even such an event is not likely to make a dent in those numbers.

The way things are…finding new worlds to conquer…may be our only option…to survive  by inhabiting in a Star Trek world.

CENTURION