Look to the sky

Just before noon on Tuesday, Oct. 23 2007, the NASA shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. By Thursday, it will hopefully have carried seven astronauts and the Harmony module to the International Space Station (ISS).

It's just past the new millennium, and already we're watching the construction of the precursor to civilization in space.

The ISS began construction in 1998 and is the combined efforts of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of Russia, Canada and Japan. It's basically a new toy for some of the United Nations to fight over.

But it's going to change the world. A floating research laboratory, cruising 200 miles over the surface of the planet and pursuing advances in biology (what are the effects of low gravity on the body?), physics and the states of matter (what materials and chemicals can we synthesize in space?), and stuff that's just plain cool: the burning of flame, for example, happens differently in non-Earth gravity. Space combustion could revolutionize alternative energy sources, too.

On board is Harmony, a living space attachment and connector module that will expand the Station. Also on board is Pamela "Pambo" Melroy, who with Peggy Whitson marks the first time two simultaneous space missions have been commanded by women.

Many of us are too busy staring at the clouds to notice this day in history, but the ISS is apparently visible to the naked eye from Earth. Don't blink, it's moving at thousands of miles per hour, making more than 15 orbits around the planet in a day.

Imagine having to shut your blinds for sunset that many times before bed.

Or don't bother. The five tourists who have bought the chance to visit the Station paid twenty-five million dollars each.

With a projected completion date of 2010 and one financial crisis already under its belt, the Station might or might not see delays due to technical difficulty. But I'll wait until 2020 if I have to. Back in Buffalo, maybe that year students will get to see at least one revolutionary project reach completion.

The experts are saying the Station is the stepping-stone to self-sustaining life in space. Equipped with solar panels for power, a life support system that recycles water, air and waste, and laboratory space for multiple fields of research, it seems like it's going to have almost everything.

It's even going to have Feng Shui. No joke, look it up.

So, no flying cars yet, and we're not quite ready to terraform Mars. But we're researching how to leave this world, and we're ready to get nations working together on something that will benefit the entire planet.

The future really is now.

You can feel it in the cell phone that wasn't even commonplace ten years ago. From behind the digital camera that's replaced film photography even more recently. In front of the videogame consol that has more processing power than the computer that first put a man on the Moon.

Will our generation see the cure for cancer? A replacement for the airline industry, or the Internet? The end of wireless communication trouble?

Ask the experts. Look to the sky.

Keep an eye on the news as the Discovery nears its goal. This week marks one more step in the making of history as the world nears completion of a research castle floating in the sky- or the thermosphere.