Feeling tied down? Need a permanent change of scenery? The First Post recommends you sign up with NASA and the Pentagon and start over on a new planet:
“The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” said Pete Worden, director of Nasa’a Ames research laboratory, at a seminar in San Francisco. “Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars [or] get fired.”
The Ames laboratory is responsible for Pioneer 10, the space probe that is currently hurtling through deep space equipped with a golden plaque describing what humans look like and the location of earth.
But while Pioneer 10 is telling the aliens – some say foolishly – where we are, the Hundred Year Starship mission is saying: ‘We’re coming to get you.’ And the aliens have reason to be frightened: while a mere $100,000 in funding is coming from Nasa, $1 million is being provided by the US government’s shadowy defence R&D agency Darpa…
I’d love it if this became like the French Foreign Legion in all those black-and-white movies. They expect to see prototype interplanetary ships in a couple of years, and colonies on Mars by 2030.