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Astronomycast episode 646 our long term future in space. Welcome to astronomycast

or weekly facts based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what

we know but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Kane, I'm the publisher of the universe today.

I've been a space in astronomy journalist for over 20 years with me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay,

a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of Cosmicquest.

Hey Pamela, how you doing? I'm doing well. I am currently experiencing that great heat wave

that is hitting mid-North America and making all of us wonder if it's time to go learn how to play

a penny whistle and do our best card imitation as we design spaceships to download human history

into the brains of an alien that gets too close. Is that is the is the penny whistle the the key

that unlocks this whole thing? Yes. That was a that was a that was a deep reach of a obscure

Star Trek generation reference. Fortunately I got it. So we're we're on the same nerd level here.

Yeah well we're continuing our junuary existence. It is continuing to be wet and cold and

and that is putting all of the excavation work that we need to do on our property on hold as we

lose excavator after excavator into the morass of our property. I think you know future

paleontologists will be puzzled as you see mammoth bones and excavator bones mixed in together.

But hopefully it'll dry out at some point. We always say that we're living in a golden age of

space and astronomy but it feels like things are just accelerating. Space travel is happening.

What does the long-term future hold for our place in the universe? Oh my god Pamela I can't believe

you put this this is catnip to me. So I know we try to keep constrained the length of these

episodes but I'm just going to go all out here so prepare yourself for for for my enthusiastic

excitement for the future. But but what did you want to talk about here today before I take over?

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