space is cool

"Space," says the opening to the terrifically successful and wholly remarkable book, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "is big. No really, you just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you might think it's a long way down to the chemist's, but that's just *peanuts* to space."

When I look up into the sky, there's an immediate humbling sensation. To realize that the world above isn't just a flat bowl upon which stars are mere points of glitter, but actually distant in space, greatly expands the world to me.

The observable universe takes up 6.3 times ten to the power of 59 times more space than the Earth does. On this scale, that where you need 59 zeroes to even write the Earth's size, the planet's size seems so miniscule. Even in our own solar system, the Earth is merely the 6th most massive object known for sure (7th if there is a ninth giant planet out there).

This knowledge comes with a startling realization: Space is big, and the Earth is small. If we want to start to understand the world we live in we gotta go big or stay home. There's so much out there to chart and catalogue, but the only stuff we can see up close and personal is the stuff in our own solar system. And the worlds in our solar system are pretty darn cool!

That's where NASA comes along.