Ad Astra Per Aspera: On Borrowed Time

Set against the tapestry of three million years, Ad Astra Per Aspera charts the path both of humanity’s quest for survival and the quest to reach the stars. Three apparently disconnected story-lines told in three different times weave to tie together the pieces necessary to humanity’s ultimate goals.

• In the year 2021, it’s a story of nearly ten billion people living in a world of dwindling natural resources and the birth of artificial intelligence.
• In the year 2467, it’s the story of humanity’s first extra-solar system trip.
• In some other time, it’s the story of a dwindling race of humans kept alive by religion, perseverance, and raw determination.

On Borrowed Time is part 1 of Ad Astra Per Apera, and is offered as an homage to the brave men and women who have given their lives to advance human exploration of space and through their efforts advanced the broader quest of humanity to survive. The latin phrase means, “Through hardships to the stars."

The part's title, "On Borrowed Time," reminds us that human society truly does live on borrowed time from a natural resources standpoint. The survival of the human race, relies on us, as a human race, making the right decisions today, for the future of mankind.

Finally, Ad Astra Per Aspera is intended to challenge our young to dream about what is possible beyond our current physics. It's a challenge to critically think beyond our current physical understanding of our universe and to challenge the status quo of what our physics tells us.

It’s not a call for reckless disregard of what we have learned through the hard work of the world’s scientists, but rather as a call to not accept scientific findings as dogma – M Theory and other trendy thinking may not be the end all or be all of physics. It is likely that the Big Bang Theory and theories of dark matter will be washed aside in a few decades as our young rise up to challenge conventional notions and go wherever scientific observations take them.

The universe is grand and mysterious and we have barely started to scratch the surface of what we understand about our physical universe. Now is not the time to become complacent. Dare to dream. Challenge the scientific establishment with fact – maybe anti-gravity is possible; maybe Faster Than Light travel is possible; maybe we’ve been looking at our problems from the wrong vantage.