Once Science Fiction - Fast Becoming Reality

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ONCE SCIENCE FICTION - FAST BECOMING REALITY Lights...camera...action! You're sitting in a darkened cinema.The title, A Space Odyssey, blazes across the screen. Science fiction? Just another futuristic story dreamed up by creative minds? We need to re-evaluate and take a closer look. What was once science fiction is fast becoming reality! The futuristic movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" introduced the audience to the limitless possibilities of space travel and sparked everyone's imagination. Here was a movie that seemed to give a "realistic" preview of what our future in space may look like - seemingly possible, but actually only fiction and fantasy . When the movie premiered forty years ago, living and working in space was definitely "science fiction". Today, the reality is that three resident crew members are aboard the International Space Station 365 days of the year - operating one of the most complicated engineering projects in our technological history. This reality sees us continually pushing the boundaries of 21st century scientific, technological and engineering prototypes. Science fiction becoming more of a reality...? Although we haven't yet colonized the moon, NASA has a plan in place to return to the moon by 2020 and maintain a permanent presence there. Other space ventures include hotels in orbit and routine tourist space travel for extremely wealthy companies and entrepreneurs. Mark Shuttleworth, a wealthy South African entrepreneur has already made space-tourism a reality. Mark rode a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to and from the International Space Station during a ten day mission in 2005. It is alleged that he paid $20 million to become the world's second space tourist. Battling robot warriors...reality or "sci-fi'? We may not be close to utilizing Terminator 3 war-androids...yet...but Robert Laird's robot warrior program currently

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