The surface area of our Earth is far from increasing, and the rate at which we populate it is far from decreasing. Larger countries, such as China have even applied certain taxes and laws to prevent families from becoming too large by their own standards. For example, the taxes a family pays would dramatically increase with each new child that the parents conceive. With tactics such as these being applied, the ultimate question becomes a matter of where we go once Earth can no longer support an overabundance of resource feeding life forms such as humans, animals, plants, bacteria, etc. Natural inclination, so far, has been to look to the sky for refuge on another planet and it has been discovered that another life form's way of life may lead to the technology necessary for humans to live under completely abnormal conditions.
             Although we are far from obtaining the necessary technology to make such a move, and we really can not be certain which planet we would even populate, our technology has been and continues to rapidly advance in a direction that would solve these problems. To put the rate of our advancements into perspective, we look at Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." In this poem, the speaker is nearly sickened by some of the advanced ideas an astronomer has about space. He is overwhelmed by the numbers, the calculations, the complexity of the ideas at the time, and he is finished listening once he finds that people approve of these ideas. This poem was written less than 150 years ago and demonstrates how inconceivable these ideas of space and space travel were at the time. Within the short period of time between the writing of this poem and the present, humans have shot themselves into space numerous times, have landed on the moon, and have used the combination of space and satellites as a means of telecommunication. These are just a few of the major advancements i...