Space.

Ok, i admit it. I'm kind of a space freak. I've always wanted to go up into space. I love a good science ficiton movie that has lots of ships and stuff like that. I actually liked the movie "Space Camp" because of the space shuttle. "Apollo 13" is one of my most favorite movies. "The Right Stuff" was an amazing movie recounting the feldgeling US Space program, and I loved all 3.5 hours and 2 DVD's of it. Me and a buddy in middle school designed a ship that used antimatter propulsion (people wonder why I didnt have many friends in middle school...lol) to travel close to the speed of light.

So whats the point of all this nerdular nerdance?

The fact that one day in my lifetime, i might get the chance to actually go into space, thank you to Virign Galactic. Wierd, huh? To think that in yours and my lifetimes, people will be travelling to space on a regular basis. Well, its true. You might have heard of the SpaceShipOne, you might not. SpaceShipOne was the first civilian spacecraft to reach technical space. Not once, not twice, but three times so far (actually, it might be up to four now); thus claiming the $10 million X-Prize. The people that designed and built the ship have signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic to start a space-tourism business within the next 2 YEARS. That, my friend, is wierd to think about. The tickets are going to cost no more than $200,000 with a $20,000 refunadable deposit. Costly, yes...but just like everything else that starts out big. Oh, and get this: theyre naming the first Virgin Galactic ship the VSS Enterprise. Cool.

Now all we need to do is find a means of propulsion that works better than a rocket. There are a few promising items, such as an ion engine or a nuclear powered ship--heck, even an antimatter engine; but what we need is like what you see in the movies: an engine that is fast, small, and allows you to descend through the atmosphere at a reasonable, controllable rate; thus ending the hazard of current re-entry. If you can slow re-entry down enough to where the friction of the atmosphere on the hull of the ship doenst create an enourmous amount of heat, then you can use lighter, better materials for your ship. You wouldnt have to worry about foam knocking off your heat tiles making your ship explode (foam? i kinda wonder why they use faom on a rocket anyway...all that high tech materials they come up with at Dupont and NASA, and the best they can find is foam?). Anti-grav technology wouldnt hurt either; but that would first require scientists to figure out what gravity really is.

Thats right. We don't actually know what gravity IS. We can see its effects on everything around us, but we dont know what makes it work. You would think that after all these hundreds of years that someone, somewhere would figure it out. Nope. Hasn't happened yet. Amazing, huh? Once we figure out what gravity is, then we can go about finding a way to counter-act it, kind of like putting two positive magnets next to each other, and a way to create it artificially. If we can do that, we can start building ships that resemble more the NCC-1701-D Enterprise and less like a flying washing-machine on steroids. I would go crazy if i was on the shuttle. Everythings either white or blue. And NASA doenst exactly organize things like you would normally on Earth. Doors in the floor, cabinets on the ceiling, sleeping on the walls. At least they could make a conscious effort to make thinks look normal. Put the door in the wall, put the beds facing the ceiling, put the cabinets on the wall. Have a designated up/down/left/right. Make things in shades of normal colors--not grey, blue and white. Something tells me NASA's never heard of green before.