Who doesn’t love space? We found out this week that a possibly habitable planet is just next door orbiting the star closest to us, and the Internet erupted with travel plans. People who might otherwise be complaining about an extra 10 minutes added to their commute were suddenly contemplating a journey that would take longer than all of recorded human history. Last year, more than four thousand folks paid actual money just for the chance to be considered for a mission to Mars that almost certainly won’t happen, probably wouldn’t succeed if it were attempted, and can’t possibly take more than a handful of people. The allure of space is strong, even though every single one of us is already an astronaut on a spacecraft traveling 250,000 miles per hour en route to the Andromeda Galaxy. I guess some of us are just really desperate to get away from (a Trump-led America | the European Union | a Clinton-led America | geopolitically topical punchline).
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