The Final Frontier

When humankind finally goes exploring into deep space, who gets to decide which way we go?

It occurred to me at the weekend, while I was listening to some people taking the piss out of Star Trek. And I got to thinking: OK, they're on a five year mission to explore space. Now, given the size of space, how much of it are you going to explore in five years? Because space is big. Ginormous, even. When we measure ourselves against space, well, the Earth is barely one particle of a gnat's fart in comparison.

But, I guess, we've got to start somewhere. The other thing that occurred to me is that we humans live a flat plane existence. Oh sure, we know the Earth is round, but it's so big that we perceive it as flat.

In reality, if you were to launch the USS Enterprise into space, there would be more than just a choice of left, right, front or back; there's up and down as well. So which way do we go? And how long do we go in one direction before we go a different way?

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the USS Enterprise. Its five year mission to seek out a new wig for William Shatner, to explore vast expanses of nothingness, to boldly go and go and go and keep going till we find something vaguely interesting. Then Bill's gonna kiss it and we can all go home.