If we don’t kill off our species before space travel and interplanetary living become the new normal, it certainly will be difficult for those born into that reality to imagine life as it was before. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden thinks the youngest among us will the first to accept space travel as the natural condition, and he’s awfully sanguine about how exploring other planets and asteroids will impact life on Earth. What JFK said in proposing a journey to the moon still holds true: “There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again.” Being humans and fallible, I would guess these new treks and achievements will also deliver new struggles and failings both down here and out there.

From Lucy Ingham at Factor Tech:

Charles Bolden, the administrator of NASA, has described today’s children as the “Space Generation,” saying they will have the opportunity to travel beyond Earth.

In a speech to the Center for American Progress in Washington today, Bolden said that the mission to Mars, the plans for which were detailed by the space agency earlier this month, would involve his granddaughters’ generation.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to travel to nearly every corner of our world, and I’ve been blessed to have seen the planet from space over the course of four space shuttle missions,” he said. “I can honestly tell you, however, that there is nothing, not a single thing, quite as awe-inspiring as being able to look into the eyes of my three beautiful granddaughters.

“To me, American progress is all about the world in which they’ll grow up, the world where they’ll someday raise their own children and grandchildren when we talk about our journey to Mars, when we talk about the next giant leaps in space exploration, we’re talking about their generation.”•