I was going through the emails I'd gotten as a part of my subscription to the Space Generation Advisory Council mailing list and I came across the following nifty offer:

Help Plan the Next 50 Years in Space!

SGAC, in partnership with the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, the  Boston University Center for Space Physics and the Secure World Foundation, invites input from young space enthusiasts 29 or under to contribute to planning the next 50 years in space.

The planning workshop will including prominent individuals such as Freeman Dyson, Elon Musk and Dr Harrison Schmitt, will be held in conjunction with a conference titled, "The Future of Space Exploration: Solutions to Earthly Problems?"

Travel expenses will be covered for two young people to attend the conference and participate in the Saturday planning workshop by representing the input gathered in this process. The processing of the input and preperation of its results will be opened to the youth community, and two individuals will be selected from the top contributors to this work.

I've signed up for it, of course, because even if I don't get chosen as a delegate, I think it'll be great to contribute to a serious discussion of where we're headed in terms of space exploration. Discussions like this happen very often among space enthusiasts, but not many of those discussions get noticed. This is a chance for our ideas to be heard by the right people and worked with. This is not the only motivation for one to join, however. If you think about it, this is a chance for those who hope to follow a space-related career to open up new horizons for themselves in the industry. It is an exciting prospect, to say the least.

Those who are interested in contributing their ideas for the future of space exploration can sign up here, and fill out the survey here, More people filling out the survey means that there will be a greater range of ideas for discussion, which in turn will result in a richer presentation for the symposium. The success of this symposium may mean the organization of more, and more is definitely good.

I've been so caught up in the mundane activities of school that I've lost sight of the visions which inspired me in the first place. In my rush to meet deadlines, I'd all but ignored the newsletters that came to my inbox, showing me pictures of worlds that no human eyes had ever seen as close. In an age where we've broken the bounds of gravity and shattered the blue bowl that is our sky, we are all too indifferent to the majesty of the faces of Venus, Mars and Saturn. I'm writing this to remind myself of all this.

Venus:


From left to right: 1) Venus' south polar vortex imaged in infrared 2) Day and night composite image (the night view on the right side imaged in infrared) "shown in reddish false colour, was taken via an infrared filter at a wavelength of 1.7 ?m, and chiefly shows dynamic spiral cloud structures in the lower atmosphere, around 55 km altitude. The darker regions correspond to thicker cloud cover, while the brighter regions correspond to thinner cloud cover, allowing hot thermal radiation from lower down to be imaged." At the bottom: "Each image is the composite of the day side of Venus (left, in blue, taken in ultraviolet light at 380 nm) and the night side (right, in red, taken in infrared light at 1.7 ?m)."

Credit: European Space Agency: Venus Express

Mars:


This is by no means a complete view of what we can see on Mars today, but I chose a few from my favorites. These images were taken (and falsely colored) with the aid of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In any case, from left to right: 1) This shows the layers at the Polar Canyon, where there are rich deposits of ice. 2) The volcano, Apollinaris Patera. At the bottom: Naneda Vallis, a canyon which is considered to be a feature indicating the presence of water in Mars' past. As the website put it, "The origin of this canyon is enigmatic: some features, such as terraces within the canyon (as seen near the top of the frame) and the small 200 m (660 ft) wide channel (also seen near the top of the frame) suggest continual fluid flow and downcutting. Other features, such as the lack of a contributing pattern of smaller channels on the surface surrounding the canyon, box-headed tributaries, and the size and tightness of the apparent meanders (as seen, for example, in the Viking image 89A32), suggest formation by collapse. It is likely that both continual flow and collapse have been responsible for the canyon as it now appears."

Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Saturn/Titan:


From left to right: 1) The tallest mountain range on Titan. "Near the center of the image, the mountain range runs from southeast to northwest. It is about 150 kilometers long (93 miles) and 30 kilometers (19 miles) wide and about 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) high." One can also see the smaller ranges around it. 2) A hurricane-like storm at Saturn's south pole, with a "well-developed eye." At the bottom: The "Great Lakes" (dark patch at the top) of Titan, made of hydrocarbon. At the left of the image, one can see a dark channel at the left of the image, probably draining into the lake.

Credit: NASA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory