Dear human of the future, I am resentful of you and your kind

The Cassini program is an international cooperative effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), as well as several separate European academic and industrial contributors.

I don’t personally take this little European approach to the project and remind readers that, once again, the USA proves itself capable of the most wonderful achievements in technology, planning, timing, brave risk taking (anyone else fancy flying through Saturn’s rings?), sharing and pin-point accuracy at huge distances while the Europeans manage to fall out of the skies.

Ok, that’s significantly unfair and, in truth, I also feel proud of ESAs achievement. However my pride is, more generally speaking, in us. People. Human people. We can be pretty gross sometimes but are also capable of things that are so mind bogglingly brilliant that one can’t help but gasp at the sheer magnificence of it all.

To think that it was not all that long ago that things like this were cutting edge and just about as cool as the human race could possibly be at the time, well, it certainly gives one reason to be hopeful for the future.

Hopeful and also resentful. I mean look; just over 100 years ago powered (heavier than air) flight was nothing but a pipe dream. Now we are hitting the moons of Saturn with probes. In another 100 years times we might be achieving things so phenomenally fantastic that they would leave a man of today shaking in awe and admiration. I’m pretty damn resentful that I won’t get to see any of that future goodness.

Damn future humans with their interstellar drives and purple hair.