I do love a good space story and over that last few days we have NASA's New Horizons sending back pictures from the Kuiper Belt 4 billion miles away and China landing a lunar explorer on the dark side of the moon.
The exciting thing about China's Chang'e 4 mission is the experiment to plant potatoes and other vegetable seeds to see if they grow in the lunar soil which could have massive implications if successful and we can grow food up there.
The pictures of the 21 mile high Ultima Thule makes it look like a giant snowman but it is the furthest out object ever visited by an Earth spacecraft.
The thing with Space exploration is that it is really, really expensive which gives the moaners something to whinge about, i hear almost every time how the money would have been better spent here on Earth which is very shortsighted, especially when you consider the overpopulation on our planet and the way we are stinking it up with our pollution so we may need a bolthole very soon anyway.
The New Horizons explorer cost approximately £600 million, the cost of our last round of Trident Nuclear Missiles was £40 billion and i know where i would prefer the money be spent.
The other problem is because of the immense distances involved, New Horizons has taken 14 years to reach the Kuiper Belt so it can be a long time between events and interest wanes between launch and arrival.
What we need are some 'sexy' missions such a men on the Moon or Mars to keep the interest levels up and i don't care if it's NASA, China, ESA or the Russians who do it but we just need to keep doing it.
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