The future is here!

I decided that the best topic for me to start this stream-of-consciousness flowing would be a momentous event that occurred two days ago. The first reuseable, manned, civilian spacecraft, Rutan's SpaceShipOne made a second successful flight, reaching an altitude of nearly seventy miles and claimed the ten million dollar award for doing so. I sincerely believe that the future existence of mankind depends on the colonization of other worlds, whether they are confined to our own Solar System or not, and this is a dramatic first step towards making that possible and finally putting space travel in the lives of ordinary people. The fact that they accomplished this on the anniversary of the first human foray into space, the first Sputnik having been launched on October 4th, 1957, made it all the more symbolic. Sadly, though, the passing of one of the first seven American astronauts from the Mercury program, Gordon Cooper, also marked this anniversary this year which metaphorically really demonstrates that the torch has been passed to the next generation of space explorers. I wish them well, and with any luck, I will make a flight before it is my time to depart this life and fulfill a life-long dream that I was beginning to suspect had no chance of occurring. It will be hard to wait...