Interstellar Space Is Mankind’s Endless Frontier: Let's Go!
After 2 billion years the evolution of life has reached the threshold of an epochal event:
the passage of life from one medium to another. As occurred 400 million years ago when the first living organism left the
sea and explored the surface of a young Earth, today, one of that organism’s descendants, Homo sapiens, is developing
the capabilities to leave the planet of origin and expand into a new and practically endless medium, outer space.
Since the beginning of time, mankind has sought to understand what is beyond the horizon.
Humanity has crossed plains, deserts, rivers, sea and oceans, and scaled mountains just to see across to the other side. Such
explorations have increased knowledge, advanced technology, and procured an immense wealth and productivity. Today, after
so many of these explorations, the entire Earth, with the exception of its oceans and internal depths, is charted and reasonably
well understood.
Our future as a durable and surviving species may lie beyond our planet. Space is our next
“over the horizon” frontier. As the Moon, Mars, and the solar system continue to be explored and human investigation
and settlement expands life, civilization, and culture within these closer territories, we look further to identify and understand
the criteria that may guarantee the long-term survival of the human species and human civilization.
This journey
is without doubt the greatest challenge humanity can embrace. The decision to travel to the stars must be a universal one.
Humanity itself must decide to undertake this venture by actively participating in these historic events, initiating a motivated
scientific and cultural momentum that even as an indirect outcome could solve many of the global problems currently challenging
us.
Such a collective and forward looking investment will be repaid many times. The global interstellar
strategy will help create employment, eliminate pollution, prevent resource depletion, poverty and disease, support economic
structures and inspire entire generations for centuries and even millennia to come.
Shall we proceed
and spark our evolution, or shall we stay in our limited world with eyes closed to the universe beyond, while we continue
to face ever more serious problems?
We must unleash our economic imagination in order to unlock the resources we need to power
Interstellar Travel.