So what happens if someone is out there?

I've never doubted there's life outside our solar system.

Instead, I've wondered how we define life and what would we do if we found some other "intelligent" being out there.

On the first point there's always been this assumption we need to find water to help sustain life. But that's assuming other life needs water or light for that matter. For a long time we assumed light was also critical but then found creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean thriving without access to light.

On the second point -- what do we do if we find life -- there seems to be someone else asking the same question. (See full article in Seed magazine.)

The article poses some interesting questions including -- who do we send these beings to if they want to talk to our leader? Also -- are we endangering ourselves by announcing our presence to others? Which leads me to believe we should just actively listen but keep our mouths shut.

Space tourism

A recent article on Business 2.0 jumped out at me. It's a short profile of Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, a company that wants to send tourists into space. (Link to full article here.)

I think there's a lot to all this and it will eventually happen but the reason that it jumped out is the fact that this is virtually the same story that was written by some writer eight years ago. (Link to full article here.)

I have no doubt space tourism will take off. Amazing, though, that in eight years it hasn't really progressed much while in eight years in the 60s the race to the moon was announced by President Kennedy (1961) and accomplished (1969.)

One case where the government actually did something efficiently.

3, 2, 1 ...

I was flying from Miami to New York when I shot this outside the starboard side of the aircraft.

It's the launch of the five-satellite rocket (THEMIS) that is designed to detect geomagnetic substorms.

Despite my time covering the industry, it was the first rocket launch I've seen live. Much more impressive than I would have thought.