Many organizations are interested in space and its exploration. The Planetary Society, the world's largest space-interest group, is dedicated to inspiring the public with the adventure and mystery of space exploration. The British Interplanetary Society is probably the original space advocate organization, but with little information available online. The National Space Society (NSS) is an independent, educational, grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Space Daily and Space.com are more commercial and focus on current news. The Space Frontier Foundation is dedicated to opening the space frontier for all humanity within our lifetimes. Moon miner is an interesting space exploration advocacy site.

Solar System - Excellent overviews of the solar system are provided by Views of the Solar System by Calvin Hamilton and The Nine Planets by Bill Arnett. Eyes on the Solar System provides an interactive sense of exploring the Solar System on your computer. A focus on human exploration of the solar system may be found at this NASA site. The National Geographic site has some nice graphics. Europe's exploration of the solar system is documented on this ESA site. These sites are so comprehensive that creating another web page on the Solar System would add little value.

Extrasolar Space

Extrasolar space encompasses the vast universe beyond our Solar System. Interest in this outer universe has grown immensely during recent decades with the discovery of exoplanets in 1992, usually considered the year of their first definitive detection. PlanetQuest, a site focusing on the search for new planets, is sponsored by NASA. Exoplanet.org, a site created by an international planet searching team, provides information directly from the source. A wealth of detail on the search for extrasolar planets may be found at the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia website maintained by Jean Schneider at the Observatoire de Paris. A fun NASA site lets you design a hypothetical planet habitable for humans.

Space Faring Powers

The nation on earth that has contributed the most resources to space exploration is the United States of America. Its space agency, NASA, has created a wonderously complex website with a multitude of information. Europe is not far behind with its site operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). Other space agency websites are available for Brazil, China, India, Japan, and Russia.

Space Ports

Space launching facilities for nations actively involved in the placement of satellites in orbit and the sending of probes to other natural bodies in space are shown in the earth image below. In a few cases, minor space ports (eg; Alcantara) are shown where operated by nations with significant space potential based on economic and technical capability. For major powers, only the significant facilities are shown.

The most active space ports at the beginning of the 21st Century are Cape Canaveral, Baikonur and Kourou. Wenchang on Hainan Island appears destined to become China's main space port. Baikonur, although located in Kazakhstan (built when it was part of the former Soviet Union), is rented and operated by Russia. The Russians are talking of closing it and relocating their facilities to a new base. The new cosmodrome, in Russia’s Far East region of Amur, will be called Vostochny and is set to be finished by 2015.

Humans Living Beyond Earth

Three factors will determine our success in space:

Extensive & accurate knowledge about what lies beyond the planet earth;

Acquiring knowledge about this universe is the principal activity of earth nations and space agencies today. Whether sending space probes within the Solar System or searching for the signs of planets orbiting other stars, such knowlege is crucial to deciding future directions into the unknown.

Finding a fast and safe means to get to where we want to go;

Improving the means of transportation and increasing human safety in space is crucial to the attainment of space travel as a commonplace occurrence. Project ICARUS, a Tau Zero Foundation (TZF) initiative in collaboration with The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), is looking at the edge of projected technology with the goal of achieving a realistically demanding interstellar mission. In 2010, Steven Hawking, in an article written for the Daily Mail, shared with us his thinking on time travel and achieving the outer limits of future space voyages.

Creating new places on other bodies in the cosmos where humans and other terrestrial life can thrive.

The third factor must await our success with the first two. Terraform is defined by Webster's Dictionary as to alter the environment of (a celestial body) in order to make capable of supporting terrestrial life forms. For human beings to live in space or on the various natural bodies orbiting the sun or other stars, terraforming to some degree will be necessary. The only other pathway is through altering the human body to enable us to thrive in environments alien to conditions on the surface of the Earth.