The first step you take to space is the one you take when you go outside and look up at the stars. A lot of questions crowd your mind. How far away are those stars? is a good one. Another one that you eventually get to is: How did they form?

Astronomy, the science that studies the stars and planets and galaxies, is a rigorous way of looking at the stars and explaining how they came to be. It applies physics, which is another science that we all learn at some point in our lives. The laws of physics describe motions, actions, and reactions. Pretty simple, really. Something happens, a law of physics describes that happening. If you can observe it, you can describe it. If it happens often enough in the same or similar ways, the laws of physics describe it. That’s the essence of science, and the application of physical laws. Clear thinking is required and it’s not hard to do once you get the hang of it.

So, the stars are out there, and over centuries of study, we’ve figured out how they work, where they came from, and what they’re going to do throughout their lives. Same with planets and galaxies and nebulae.

But, the first step is to go out there and gaze.

There’s a project going on in the first two weeks of October called the Great World Wide Star Count. It’s aimed at anybody who wants to go outside, look up at the stars, and then share what they see with others. It’s a science project, and as such things go, it’s pretty easy. You go outside, look for specific constellations and then come inside and write up what you see in a form on the World Wide Web. Visit the link to find out more. It’s time to step outside to the stars! Start practicing for the Star Count tonight!

All my life I’ve been interested in going to space. It feels like the right place to be, considering that the origins of life and the elements that make up our bodies all come from space. It only makes sense that we take ourselves back out and show space what we’ve become out of those raw materials, right?

Of course, everybody knows that the U.S. and Russia were the first ones to go to space in any meaningful kind of way. That all began in the late 1950s and has continued to this day. A fair number of other countries have joined in a sort of slow diaspora to the regions beyond our planet. That list includes France (most recently as part of the European Space Agency, which includes 15 member nations and their national agencies), Japan (through Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Canada (through ESA and NASA), China (through the China National Space Administration),and India (Indian Space Research Organisation). And for a couple of years now, the government of Dubai has been talking about getting into the space tourism business, along with others such as Virgin (of Virgin Atlantic) fame.

So, there’s this interest in space. And it costs a lot of money, time, and technology to get us back to where we came from—safely and in one piece. I often wonder why we waste time and money on wars and internecine political struggles that have mostly to do with greed or the unnecessary imposition of one people’s viewpoint on another (often unwilling) people. We could be be bettering people’s lives with our technology and science, and also getting on with the business of exploring space. It’s not an idle question and the answer requires us to be anything but petty, greedy, intolerant, and warlike. Living and working in space will be difficult enough. But, many of us continue to look to space as the place to go… someday.