With Voyager poised to leave our solar system, Timothy Ferris, the writer who helped compile the time capsules they carry, reflects on our deepest foray into outer space. Plans to mine minerals on celestial bodies could violate many aspects of international space law. A review of Extreme Cosmos: A Guided Tour of the Fastest, Brightest, Hottest, Heaviest, Oldest, and Most Amazing Aspects of Our Universe by Bryan Gaensler. Deflecting asteroids: A solar sail could use light to nudge an earthbound rock into an orbit we could live with. Space anthropology: An interview with Kathryn Denning in the very human way that scientists, engineers and members of the public think about the search for alien life. Why has humanity's expansion into space gone so slowly, if it's even going forward at all? Alone in the void: Like it or not, we are probably trapped in the solar system for a long, long time. Keith Hanson on transhumanism and the human expansion into space. Battleship Earth: Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion? Seth Shostak offers five points about aliens that don't cut it in Hollywood: “2. If aliens come, we’re probably toast”.
