To Infinity and Beyond!

By Adrienne Scott

To boldly go where no man has gone before. Who doesn’t know the opening line of Star Trek? But let’s face it, we are 12 years into the 21^st century, and unless you have $20 million to spare on an hour trip to zero gravity, most of us earthlings are not leaving the home planet anytime soon. Warp speed or TARDIS travel aside, what’s a student to do?

Well, the CSU, Chico museum studies students of fall 2012 took up the Star Trek mission and boldly built an exhibition that pays tribute to the brave voyagers and stunning beauty of our solar system. The Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology’s Infinity and Beyond: Humanity’s Quest to Explore Space takes visitors on a virtual journey from the earliest celestial observations of ancient civilizations to the most recent NASA success, landing Curiosity on Mars.

The exhibit asks, will humans colonize space? What obstacles are left to overcome? Who will those bold, intrepid astronauts be? Do you have the right stuff? Should we even go before we clean up our own planet?

Come see sights that are literally out of this world. Join the conversation about humanity’s future beyond Earth. Unlike true intergalactic travel, on this museum trip, you can be to infinity and back again in just under an hour, for free. Journeys take off all semester Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Museum portal located in the Meriam Library complex across from the library’s main entrance. Have a nice flight!

Heavy Construction Made Weightless: Building the International Space Station, a talk by NASA Astronaut Dr. Stephen K. Robinson