Yesterday we landed a probe on a comet. I am saying we because this is a major accomplishment for humanity. For reference, powered heavier-than-air flight was invented only a tad more than one hundred years ago. It is important to really let this sink in. After millennia of dreaming about flying into the skies we went in a little over a century all the way to steering a craft to line up with a comet traveling at 40,000 miles an hour!
What makes all of this possible is human ingenuity together with the combinatorial power of knowledge. That’s why it is critical that if we want to advance humanity we need to tear down the bulwark of intellectual property protections that has been built up and figure out how to widely collaborate on big problems such as climate change, sustainable farming, healthcare and yes, interstellar space travel.
