[js1138]

I do pity the poor folks who grow up in a period of time where discovery is a very rare and difficult thing to find.

In one of my meaner moments I asked my children how it felt to grow up with space travel in the past instead of the future. Looking back, I suspect that was a kind of child abuse, even if I intended it as a joke.

I honestly think your worries are misplaced. It sounds to me like an artist thinkng everything has been painted because all the paint colors have been invented.

There is a descriptive side to science and an inventive side. When all the pebbles have been counted, you can still make things with them.

[NJ_gent]

"I honestly think your worries are misplaced."

I'm not worried for me. As I said in another post, I don't expect that mankind will have exhausted the quest for discovery until well after our sun has long since exploded. :-)

"When all the pebbles have been counted, you can still make things with them."

Sure, but there are a finite number of possible configurations for the pebbles. It may take an extraordinary amount of time to run through all of them, but what do you do when you're the guy at the end of the line, growing up with everything else tried, tested, and run into the ground?

"In one of my meaner moments I asked my children how it felt to grow up with space travel in the past instead of the future."

Ahh, but space travel is only the beginning. Getting into space is just the first step. We've never sent humans to another planet before. We've never sent humans to another star system before. Nor have we sent anything to another galaxy. There are many exciting things that have yet to pass any of us by.