Space is the Place - The Last Shuttle Mission

 Just a few hours ago, we witnessed the last shuttle launch.  Atlantis lifted off, heading to the International Space Station.  I'm certain many of us anime fans are also big fans of space exploration  and certainly this final mission must feel bitter sweet.  NASA says it won't be until 2016 before there's really a true replacement to the shuttle and with congress cutting their budget by $1.6 billion & canceling the James Webb telescope, one could be worried about what the future holds for space exploration.  

To be positive though, here's a few current and upcoming missions for NASA and our explorations in space.

• New Horizons will arrive at the (dwarf) planet Pluto in 2015.  As of March, it got a gravity boost from Uranus.

• The Voyager 1, is at the heliopause and is practically in interstellar space.

•  The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft continues to study Saturn and recently confirmed salt water is spewing from the geysers of Saturn's moon, Enceladus. 

• Any day now, Dawn will arrive at the second largest asteroid, Vesta. In a few years, it'll give us our first clear images of the dwarf planet Ceres. 

There's also a number of probes and sensors mapping the Cosmic Wave Background and peering into the center of our galaxy.  Lets not forget the International Space Station has a fully functioning lab in space that will only be for the betterment of humanity.  These are some great feats but at the same time thee is so much more that we should be doing concerning manned space flight.  Ideas like a colony on the Moon, launch pads on the moon, a manned trip to Mars, a space elevator and heck..I'll say it, Gundams (well, mechs in general) are all something that are possible if the masses here would get their focus out of pathetic events like some random court case or fighting over who's fairy-tale book is less insane.

 We must not forget that space is the future.  My parents were hardly teenagers when we landed on the Moon and I don't want to be in my 60's and 70's in the 2050's with nothing tell me grandchildren that would bring awe and inspiration.  Time to drop these religious wars, fighting over some imaginary guy in the sky (and our imaginations) and focus on the true reality that's there; a reality that's far more wondrous than some 2000 year old book written by an opium-high nut-job in a cave could ever come up with. 

Here's the classic Toonami short on space.  Let's never give up on our future.

image above, from this post