The best article I've seen so far about the lack of a reasonable justification for human space travel has shown up in an unlikely place. The New Atlas website is devoted to exhibiting the latest technical gadgetry. It is an entertaining resource if you just want an overview of what new tech toys are on the market. And yet...
The New Atlas article by David Szondy, Humans in space: Are astronauts obsolete?, provides a thorough history of Space Travel, its sky-high costs, and the fundamental reasons why including human crews is a dead end.
Our neighbor across the street adopted two tabby kittens soon after she moved in. Her vision was so poor she could not tell one from the other, but she was very attached to them and provided generally good care. She insisted that they be free to roam the neighborhood.
In spite of the fact that they had a large yard at their disposal the two cats seemed often to prefer our yard to theirs. I didn't mind the intrusion as they were quite friendly toward me, and I often went out to say hello when I saw them perched on our fence rail.
About a month ago our neighbor was told she had to move as the home's owner was going to undertake some substantial house repairs. She found a rental close to Albuquerque's Old Town a mile to the west of our neighborhood. We helped a bit with the final packing for the move and piled some boxes and the two cats into a friend's car for the trip to their new home.
About a week later we got a call from our former neighbor saying that one of the cats, probably the male, had disappeared, and she asked us to look out for it. Given the distance to be traveled it seemed unlikely the cat would successfully make that journey, but I did look around the property.
When I called back with no good news, our neighbor asked if I could pick her up and bring her to our neighborhood so she could look herself for the errant cat.
To my great surprise, the cat did soon show up in response to the owner's calls. I said it seemed like a good idea to limit the cats' roaming, possibly including some training to walk on a leash.
About ten days later came another call and another request to bring the cats' owner to the former home. I was even more pessimistic this time as surviving the long trip which included negotiating heavy traffic for a second time seemed highly improbable. I dropped off the cat owner at the property and told her to let us know how the search went.
Within minutes the lady with the cat cradled in her arms was at our back door.
It seems now that the idea has finally sunk in that the two cats need to reconcile themselves to an indoor lifestyle. We are happy with that outcome, and still marveling at the cats' navigational skills.
In the initial car trip to their new home the cats could not have gotten any visual clues to the route taken. It seems they must somehow have been able to detect and compare the coordinates of the two properties and then plot a course.
There have been a lot of research projects tracking the movements of both wild and domestic dogs and cats, but most of that is centered on movements within home ranges. Testing an ability to reach a known destination through unfamiliar territory presents a different challenge which cannot be easily met under natural conditions.
There has been research, however, which indicates that all cats have a homing instinct which can point them in the right direction for a successful return, barring accidents in route.
Just how such a navigational capacity works is not really known at present. Speculation on the issue most frequently points to the possibility of a sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field similar to that which has been proposed for migrating birds.
