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The Dream
Sep 29, 2004 00: 54 EST
Panspermia is a theory that suggests that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the Universe and life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating. The theory has origins in the ideas of Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher.
Modern time astronomers and Nobel prize winners support the idea. The Egyptians traced the origin of our civilization to a comet. The comet's name is Pythom.
Since the beginning of time, our Earth has been explored and its horizon expanded by wanderers and adventurers. Names like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Ernst Shackleton are forever etched in the exploration history of man.
Pythom.com is launched today, Wednesday, September 29, 2004 as the final part of ExplorersWeb. This is also the day of the world's first private manned space flight. Already June 21, the rocket touched the fringes of space, 100km up. Creator Burt Rutan's mission is to bring space travel to the general public. If the flight is a success, Rutan's spacecraft will make a new flight one week later on October 4 to qualify for the $10-million Ansari X Prize.
The private US-based Ansari foundation launched the prize eight years ago to give the same impetus to space travel that the Orteig prize did to inspire Charles Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight in 1927.
The flight marks a paradigm shift in human space exploration. No less than 26 other teams are in line for the same mission.
Aviation magnate and adventurer Richard Branson announced that his new Virgin Galactic venture is aimed to send 3 000 new astronauts into space within the next five years.
The projects are spread all over the world and they can't be stopped. The money and the problems will be overcome - in our lifetime.
"No doubt the explorers of 2015, if there is anything left to explore, will carry pocket wireless telephones, fitted with wireless telescopes" said Thomas Orde-Lees in Shackleton's Endurance Expedition, 1915.
He was right, but we were early. In 2001 Contact was created - by explorers - named after the movie Contact and Carl Sagan, whose 1985 novel was the basis for the film. Ever since then, PDA's and Sat phones inside our frozen jackets, we scale Everest, climb K2, and swim to the North Pole transmitting pictures and videos in instant diaries back to the world.
We are the new explorers. Born to explore but seriously stuck here on earth, growing increasingly tired of climbing Everest backwards and skiing to North Pole blindfolded, whilst watching pictures of Saturn's moon Phoebe with walls 10 000 meters high. We want to find taller mountains, vaster oceans and other people. Just like our ancestors did.
NASA states the problems: No doctors, expedition members hating each other, brittle bones and radiation. Done that.
Bush declared he wants to land astronauts on Mars around 2030. Budget: $1 billion a year over the next five years. Except the U.S. government already spends $15.5 billion a year on the space program - in turn less than 1 percent of the overall budget. Nasa is not getting new money, just rearranging the old ones. We are not waiting anymore.
Check our past to see our future: We will promise our Kings gold. Use the competition between our new rulers - the Tycoon companies. We'll build our own rockets out of E-bay parts and keep our fingers crossed. That's how it's always been done. And that's how we'll do it again.
This is the only site on ExplorersWeb that doesn't have a guide. The reason is simply that this expedition has never been done before. Instead, we'll trace, track and compile all the private projects, and the cool scientific research aimed at getting us out there. Not "them" but "us" - you and me. So for now, this site has only two subjects in the menu: The Dream, and the Expedition's list. Welcome to Pythom.
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ExWeb updated expeditions list - Space!
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Titan: Rain fall, methane rivers, volcanoes spewing ice
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ET coming closer: Suns like ours spotted with planetary debris dis
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The Wow signal - listen up!
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Mars Society: Looking for a few good Martians - that's YOU buddy!
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The Space Frontier Foundation
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| Discovery Returns to the Vehicle Assembly Building May 31, 2005 | | ExplorersWeb Week in Review May 30, 2005 | | Space tourists are not rocket scientists and might be super sized May 27, 2005 | | Olsen back to Space? May 26, 2005 | | "Robonauts" to help humans in space May 25, 2005 | | Interstellar exploration: Voyager enters the solar system's final frontier May 24, 2005 | | Russia plans manned mission to Mars, but money first May 23, 2005 | | ExplorersWeb Week in Review May 22, 2005 | | Rutan under-whelmed by NASA May 20, 2005 | | Space flight price wars May 19, 2005 |
| | NASA launches new explorer schools May 18, 2005 |
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2004
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