Space Travel: the next step?
To go or not to go; that is the question. Me, I vote yes, but since we cannot go right now, what should we do right now?
What do we know? Recent planetary exploration brings a flurry of results:
The last few months have been remarkable for planetary exploration. We have found a planet about twice the size of earth in the habitable zone of a star about the same size as our sun, and we have had space vehicles gather information of Ceres and Pluto, neither of which were significantly better than blobs in our best telescopes. Finally, there was a landing on a comet. From these, we have gathered a lot of data, but it is interesting to reflect on what extra we know.
No Life Under Ice at Europa?
There has been much speculation that there may be life in oceans of water under the ice layer of the Jovian satellites, particularly for Europa. In my theory, outlined in my ebook Planetary Formation and Biogenesis, there will be no such life.