End of the Space Age? No Thank You!

I was listening to Q on Radio One this morning. Jian Ghomeshi was speaking in reaction to an opinion piece put forth by The Economist this week on the end of the US space shuttle operation after thirty years.

Allegedly, this marks the end of the Space Age as well. At least by their lights. (And it seems they're of a mind to say "Good riddance!" by the looks of it.)

Mine, as you might expect from a hardcore TV and comic-book space opera fan? Not so much. I'm one of those people whom The Economist would rather have you consider as having non-existent, irrelevant and ignorable opinions on this subject.

So you won't be at all surprised to see me call - pardon my using the best word for it, please? - bullshit on them for that.

Also, not interested in seeing an end to exploring Big Ideas. Too many left to chase down, you know?

I have no doubt that pursuing space exploration and its spin-offs won't solve all or even most of our problems. I don't expect that. More importantly, I shouldn't have to expect it either. The questions that space exploration poses are interesting enough to pursue as they are.

We're not done with this. NASA may indeed be done with the shuttles, but humanity's nowhere near done with space. Nor it with us.

More as time goes by...