If you think about how big the earth is, think how far you would be if you drive a mile per minute, then think how far you traveled, compared to the diameter of the earth. Think how long it would take to drive the diameter of the earth at 60 miles per hour.

Think how long it would take to make it to the moon in car, at any logical speed without combustion. Really, the moon is just a bunch of cratered scars from past collisions, but it is so different compared to the earth, and such a dramatic size difference as well. The sun isn't even a planet, as it just radiates enormous amounts of heat and energy and light (more light than when we look up on a sunny day)

We've all seen diagrams and pictures of what some of the other planets of our system, but we do not have the technology yet to see up close what the ground surface looks like, disregarding obviously Mars. Some planets are mostly just dust and dunes, and dust storms. Some are "gaseous planets" like Neptune. Some are mostly ice and rock because of their distance from the sun, Pluto. How come Jupiter is so much larger than dwarf planets? What made a planet like earth much more habitable than others? Saturn has those cool rings around the planet and its own asteroid belts inside said rings.

How long would it be to take that same car speed, and travel to just another planet? Even in a rocket traveling at its average speed, what can we expect to see as we venture farther from earth and explore what darkness has to offer?

Just typing "Galaxies" on google shows different formations and unique shapes for some already known
galaxies.

We might know from research what the milky way, but we can not yet actually see in first person what it looks like. What would it be like to watch a supernova in person, planet just explodes and burns your eyes completely blinds you immediately afterwards?

Just knowing how far it'd be to travel from mercury to neptune, how far would it be to travel to distant planets outside of our system? Before Columbus, people believed earth was like a square map. If you went off the edge, then you don't know what would happen, until we discovered the earth was a sphere. Map similar to a sphere or a map? If so, then how far would the plane extend to? Or is it just an infinite path that includes planets and other cosmic objects along the way? If you flew a rocket in a straight path for all your life, where would it lead you to? More darkness of space, assuming you disregard objects straight in your way?

How do we know that black holes truly exist? As far as I know, nobody has every through a black hole to explain what it is. The same goes to warping portals that bridge parts of space closer together, like how an accordion expands and shrivels?

I know this is a lot of thinking, but space is really much more complex than most of us can imagine.

http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/theres-no-place-like-home/ ?  < the reason why I ask you all these questions. I think that this is a pretty visual and realistic visualization of what our planets look like, disregarding how they are arranged. it highlights that each planet is different, and looks much better to other diagrams, in my opinion

Just providing a few facts, first...

Alpha Centauri is known to be the closest solar system to Sol.  It is 4.3 light years, or 25.6 trillion miles, away.  Our current space shuttles have a maximum speed of 17,600 miles per hour (pretty darn fast, if you ask me), and would take approximately 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.

Who discovered the earth wasn't flat?  Well, Pythagoras is credited with first suggesting it, and Plato turned it into common knowledge from there.  Eratosthenes used the angles of shadows to not only prove that the Earth was round, but to calculate the Earth's circumference to within a 15% error.  That was in about 240 BC, while Columbus sailed to America (or rather, the Bahamas and Cuba) in 1492.  The greedy fool's big selling point to the Spanish rulers was that he grabbed a globe by Persian Al-Fargh?n? and presented it as if the notations were roman miles instead of Arabic, meaning the earth must be far smaller than some predicted. 


Now, my hope for space exploration is that mankind will decide it's worth the decades of funding it'll take to find ways to travel safely and quickly between the stars so we can do some more in-depth probing of other planets than just dropping a mobile camera with a couple of waldos.  Maybe we'll find other inhabitable planets, strange new elements and/or actual alien civilizations.  Maybe not.  What I expect is that nobody is going to be willing to put that kind of effort into it, and even if they do, one mishap like the Challenger will disenchant them for decades. 

ah well, someone figured out the earth was a sphere....

I'd love for the human race to travel to the infinite worlds and dimensions without killing ourselves in the process, going into the void of parallel universes and seeing what would of happened if Napoleon won at Waterloo; if Hitler won World War II; Ayrton Senna didn't die at a Formula One race; If Sony stayed with Nintendo and made the SNES-CD a success; And other great "What if this had happened..." thoughts.