Space is the final frontier and something that both fascinates and terrifies everyone. We all know that we fear what we don't understand, and for most people, understanding space is something that is more or less impossible. We will know the basics about the Big Bang and our own solar system and galaxy and the plethora of other galaxies around us but that is only scratching the surface of what is the most complicated subject on the planet. Space research is constantly being undertaken by different space agencies around the world and we are all eager to answer so many different questions about our existence as well as potential alien life in the universe.

It all started decades ago when the American's and the Russian's began to compete with each other in the Space Race. Both countries were eager to out a man on the moon and into space first of all. Russia won the first battle, playing Gagarin into space with the first manned space flight, but the US took the reigns and got Armstrong onto the moon before their bitter rivals.

Well, not a great deal to be honest. Whilst technological advances on earth are rocketing forward at quite a pace, space advances have seen little tangible progress over the decades. We are constantly in a state of gathering information about what lies beyond us but this really is the extent of what we are able to achieve right now.

We have managed to get a craft onto the surface of Mars, but an actually visit to the planet is what we are all waiting for. The Ares program is currently being created by NASA in order to allow us to extend our reach into space but this is still going to have its serious limitations.

In order to truly extend our arm we need to be creating forms of travel that let us traverse space at incredible and unheard of speeds. We all know about science fiction films where space travel is constantly done at light speeds and many people consider this to be the next step. But is this realistic? can we really build crafts that are capable of travelling at the same speed as light through the confines of space?

Well the truth is that the law of physics simply will not allow this to occur. Whilst it is impossible to know what tech advances will come up with in the future, right now we are very much limited to exploration that can be done within very close proximity to our own planet. Therefore, whilst Mars is a realistic possibility, beyond that we may never be able to extend our reach.

And even if light speeds were able to be done, then this is not enough to get us to the vast majority of the universe. Given that most planets and constellations are many many light years away we would still find ourselves in the same pickle as before.

The experts say this will not happen until sometime after 2030 so we will certainly be holding our breath for a fair bit longer!