Han Musk: It’s all well and good for galactic impresario Elon Musk to announce that his multi-trillion dollar Space X project is on the cusp of opening the door to real-life Captain Kirks and Han Solos so that man can literally go where he has never gone before. But where, pray tell, will he go? Mars is the only planet in our solar system scientists believe might support human life. Trips to Venus (too hot) or to Jupiter (composed mostly of gases) might captivate sci-fi fans but have little consequence for human beings since they cannot be inhabited. Cutting to the space chase, it is interstellar travel that is most appealing and exciting, though it is just this kind of travel that is outside Han Musk’s reach. Distant exploration will demand either the arresting of mortality, cryonic sleep, or the creation of spacecraft capable of so-called warp speed. That or the invention of quantum physics machines that bypass time as we know it and put man in two places at once, much in the spirit of “Beam me up, Scotty.” Bottom line: the newer, bigger, faster, and more versatile rockets are impressive, but to reach the sci-fi galaxies the childish and churlish Musk boasts of exploring will require not improved rocket technology but a basic rethinking of human life, a frontier no one has yet to even approach.