There’s been a lot happening on the space front in the past few days. SpaceX has begun launching and recovering the new Block 5 versions of their trusty Falcon 9 rockets. They still haven’t mastered recovery of the nose cones, but it’s become a routine for them to bring back the rocket’s first stages. And then there are more sightings of possibly habitable worlds. Of course, to reach them, we’ll need an FTL drive. Uh, no word on that happening anytime soon.

A shame.

And then there’s Branson and his little space tourism rocket ship– the latest flight exceeded mach 2 and reached 170,000 feet. Soon we’ll be looking at the first true tourist flights and the monetization of space flight.

And finally, there is the announcement of the possible discovery of liquid water on Mars, possibly a lake under a glacier. It’s about twelve miles long or so. People are excited about this because such lakes sustain life in Antarctica. I dunno. The water, if it’s indeed water, is probably a hellish brine. Probably not drinkable, and possibly too toxic for life. However, there are organisms here on Earth that flourish in those circumstances, so who knows.

Pretty cool that there may be water on the surface of the Red Planet. However, I have long thought that the best chance for life on Mars would be in cave systems well under the surface. Look at all the weird stuff that lives in caves here on Earth- now imagine what may be found on Mars.

But all of the above highlights a trend as of late. There is a lot of exciting stuff going on in the space realm. I wonder if it’s the result of generations raised on science fiction who won’t take no for an answer- who want to go out there, take risks and explore.

This is encouraging.