When the late engineer and designer Buckminster Fuller described us as being on spaceship Earth, he may have had a fundamental insight about our future. Earth is our only viable biosphere at the present time. And if we accept the premise that we are on spaceship Earth, we must acknowledge that we have hardly left the launch pad in terms of exploring what surrounds our spacecraft.

The universe, by contemporary measurements, extends 156 billion light years. The nearest galaxy is 2 million light years away while more distant galaxies are 10 billion or 12 billion light years away, too far for any known propulsion system. And communication, as we know it, would be prohibitively lengthy — not days, months, or years, but decades, centuries, and even longer between a sender of a message and its recipient. After all, it takes more than seven months for a rocket to reach Mars.

We have heard for years that to sustain life in space, we would require water. We assume that to manufacture in space, we would also require water. Well, space is full of surprises: It is snowing on Mars, according to NASA. Where there is snow, we can assume there is water.

Are there inhabitable planets beyond our solar system? A few years back, we figured ours alone had a sun (a star) around which planets orbited. Now we have identified hundreds of stars with orbiting planets. Astronomers think there may be millions or billions of stars with planets.

Given that human life is relatively short, the use of robots seems a credible discovery method for the foreseeable future. Most of our data now comes from robots, automated telescopes, satellites, or space probes that are part robotic, part communication, and part energy systems. Clearly, they are contemporary automation in action and require a huge amount of managing.

Space research has been pushing technology since its inception. Let's recall software simulation that has become critical to design and manufacturing; new materials developments; computer development; robotic technology advancements such as the Shuttle Canada arm and the new Japanese robot arm slated for the International Space Station; communications technology advancements; energy advancements that have pushed solar panel development; miniaturization; and yet to be fully realized space manufacturing.

The potential for discovery, growth, and reward is staggering. It is here we will have to build, if we are to build.

It may take a poet to know the real nature of our spaceship Earth. William Blake wrote in his poem the Auguries of Innocence: