Universal dreams

No matter who the person is, we always look up into the night sky and look at the stars. It makes us think of our place in the world, we think of the vastness of the universe, we find a particular star and make a wish upon it, we dream about putting our arm up and grabbing the stars in a sense of reaching for our dreams. Many cultures have worshiped the stars, built monuments in unthinkable scale, to line up with a particular constellation with perfect accuracy. The cosmos brings out our hunger for exploration, it gives us a spark to want to learn and understand.

The universe has always been my faith, it inspires me, yet it makes me humble. I love the feeling of being so small in comparison yet feeling I am a part of it, thinking of it, trying to understand it. It shows out of random chaos, beautiful and unthinkable things happen. Out of dust and molecules, great and unimaginable things happen. I like to compare it to life that no matter how bad and ugly things can get, there is always a chance for great things.

I find it to be so inspiring, that we discover more and more things about the universe that surrounds us. Not that long ago the thought of there being other planets around all those stars to be something rare, it turns out planetary systems are actually quite common. More and more planets are discovered all the time.

One day I feel we will bump into another civilization, a civilization that just like us started by staring up to the stars, and being enchanted with that sense of wonder. At the moment traveling to these new worlds seems pretty much impossible. Some of our mainstream scientific theories pretty much make it impossible. However to me it always seems the impossible always end up being quite possible. As long as you are willing to push yourself, your boundaries will always break down and open up new possibilities.

Currently as a society our addiction to green paper, and our sense of instant gratification that is burned into our skulls has gotten in the way of our dreams. Buying valuables, and getting the newest iPhone to satisfy our hunger for new things in which we put this idea of value into. We are wasting money on war and death, fighting over resources, abusing said resources, putting value on food and water, people's right to shelter and warmth. Putting this fake value on everything yet we are finding less and less value into the sciences that involve space exploration, understanding the universe, and doing what we do best which is the impossible. Which in a sense it is a bit ironic, because these resources that we burned through at the expense of our environment, these metals in which we base value on, that are finite and will run out, but then we start cutting off the possibilities of getting said resources in massive quantities from asteroids where there is no environment to destroy.

It is nice to see two companies that started up recently that plan to mine asteroids and meteors in their future. I think we really need to all push these sorts of adventures, the development of spacecraft and the research of new technologies into different forms of propulsion and energy production have benefits way beyond their intended goal. The original Apollo missions created so many things in which we use today, and created the framework for the technology we use today.

If there is any investment to the generations of youth, to society in the future, to our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren and so on, it is the investment into the unknown and reaching for the stars we always dreamed of. We are part of a vast universe, filled with the most beautiful and breathtaking sights and sounds, objects, and things we could never even imagine. Our destiny is the stars as well as our future, pushing these boundaries will not only ensure the survival of our own planet, it will reignite the flames of exploration we all strive for deep down, it is also the best way for all of us to come together, to understand ourselves, and make reality out of our dreams.

-Steve Catalli