For Life Beyond Earth 

Life is one of the mysteries of the cosmos that has mystified humankind since the dawn of consciousness. The multifold universe that we live amidst has existed for at least thirteen to fifteen billion years with an approximate one hundred billion stars amidst our galaxy in this local cluster of fifty four galaxies, where at least one hundred billion galaxies can be accounted for in the observable Universe, making somewhere around one septillion stars, or one thousand raised to the eighth power (ten to the twenty fourth). Earth has many religious and scientific belief systems that have been the primary semantic writings that human beings have been taught for all of our verbal and written history. In the old testament texts, Eve conceived the children of earth with Adam, the first human beings to begin the civilisations that inhabit planet earth. Religious scholars have noted that the earliest translations of the words passed down reflect an intuitive scientific perspective, particularly that Eve and Adam were at one time one being, reflecting the scientific hypothesis that life started out as one celled organisms in an ancient primordial soup three and a half billion years ago, being our original stromatolite ancestors. 

Arthur C. Clarke opens up our possibilities being a species of natural explorers with what began in the forms of the original tools, the awl, the basket, the bow, the harp, the flute, the wheel, the kite, the steam engine, magnetic levitation, the development of the space shuttle and what will perhaps one day be the portable origami space elevator. Understanding the predictions of earth's weather patterns will allow us to establish space elevators at geosynchronous points that both allow feasible satellite bases above earth's atmosphere and an area with normalised weather so that the immense structure maintains its stability. Arthur is noted for predicting the communications satellite well before it became an actuality as well as having written a novel about the possibility of future space elevators. 

This eventuality will allow all of humankind to settle amidst the planets of our solar system, eventually terraforming the planets of distant stars, beginning with Proxima Centauri b, just a hint larger than planet earth. This planetary finding orbits around Proxima Centauri, the closest star to planet earth in the trinary Alpha Centauri star system, being Centauri A (Rigil Centaurus), Centauri B (Toliman), and Centauri C (Proxima Centauri). 

The most important element of planetary exploration amongst the stars will be establishing and enforcing procedures and laws that will allow us to maintain an ongoing interstellar civilisation while preventing the historical chaos that humanity has learned through the educational process since the dawn of time, through trial and error. 

Although our ancestors were born of Mother Earth and Father Time, our ultimate destiny is to meet our descendants, who are waiting for us in the future in the Heavens, amidst the Stars. -E.A. Anderson