Technology and Hope

We all struggle at times, whether it's work, family, school, friends, relationships, money, or some unholy combination of them and everyone has their own way of coping with the stress and the chaos.  Some are more healthy than others, and today I want to talk about one of the ways I am reminded of all the awesome things the world has in store for me and others, even when I'm struggling.

I like to research cool things about space, and everything to do with it.  It's a mind boggling concept, that we are an insignificantly small bag of molecules on a large rock orbiting a star that is one of about 400 billion stars in our galaxy out of about 500 billion other galaxies.  We are also the only thing on the planet with the cognitive ability to comprehend those numbers.  Our mental complexity is what enables us to think about our own insignificance, which I for one find humorous.

Anyway, space is cool, and I'll hurry up and get to the thing I found out about this week that has made me excited about the future.  Ion engines exist, and have been used on spacecraft.

Now you may be thinking, big whoop.  So they came up with some fancy new engine, they are doing stuff like that all the time.  If this is the case, you may need to hand in any sci-fi cred you claim to possess, because ion engines are one of the core pieces of sci-fi spaceships.

For example the TIE fighter from Star Wars.  If you weren't already aware, TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine.

So you may say that it's just some new crazy engine that is only useful for silly space stuff, but to me, it means we are one step closer to exploring the galaxy, and one step closer to me being able to fly a TIE fighter in space.