Armstrong’s first steps for humanity were like a baby reaching a doorway; humanity hasn’t taken many more, or left our small room.
“New Horizons transformed Pluto from a fuzzy telescopic dot, into a living world with stunning diversity and surprising complexity,”
I was recently alerted to a new image of Pluto by a BBC Horizon documentary (available in the UK on iplayer for another 19 days), and a further search led to a NASA article with research from a historic fly-by five years ago, where that Pluto quote derives from (and the BBC documentary too!).
My Neil Armstrong ‘one small step… one giant leap for mankind’ quote introduction was inspired by a Facebook image.
Pluto Interest Close Up
I think the new Pluto evidence is a good example of how there are zillions more things about the universe we don’t know than we do (as Socrates said the wisest people are those who know they know little 2500 years ago), as we take our first baby steps in the universe… with no chance of humans reaching Pluto in our lifetimes.
While the technology used is amazing and I really appreciate them sharing, there’s no plans to go back to find out more, although they’re trying to work out how a lander could work, and how to get funding!
Humanity’s advances in my lifetime have been amazing, but for most things we’re still trying to work out what’s going in the far distance by sight and theory only – often trying to make calculations from other places, like ancient sailors may have thought all islands on Earth had the same flora and fauna!?
A field just looks green, lifeless and barren from afar, but when you get up close, you see all the colours, life and contours. I think it’s the same in space, as the Pluto evidence suggests; and who knows what’s over the ‘New Horizons’!?
It was also partly what I was writing about; along with personal and Earthly matters; in my fantasy fiction and philosophical introspection magnum opus…
mistYmuse 