Harking back to an observation by Stephen Hawking - ‘mankind must colonise space or die out,’ – should make us wonder whether some countries are not already heading in this direction, now that the US X-37B robotic plane has made a successful landing after its 274-day mystery mission in space. Hawking had claimed that Earth’s finite resources and population rise increasingly endanger human life, and that mankind’s future ‘must be in space if it is to survive.’ Man’s fascination with space and flying is, of course, as old as mankind itself; Icaurus’ fatal rendezvous with the Sun as he attempted to escape from Crete by donning wings made from feathers and wax is the stuff of Greek myth and lore. But in today’s time and space, people do fly – not only in aircraft but in all sorts of contraptions. Paragliding, one among them for instance, is a popular recreational sport around the world which gives a closer feel of flying.

It’s fortunate though that man cannot actually zoom around in the air like a free bird by just using his bare limbs for, as some environmentalists warn us, he could do irreparable damage in the skies as well after depleting the earth of its valuable life-giving resources. But examples like the X-37B tell us that mystery missions in space may not be all about man’s quest to colonise space for his future survival, they could, perhaps, herald a new chapter in space-based weapons. Of course, it’s all hush-hush stuff though – the US Air Force insists that the spacecraft is testing out new technologies for future satellites and space exploration. Details of this robotic space shuttle’s mission as well as its payload after it remained for such a long time up there are highly classified. It is this secrecy that gives rise to speculation that the unmanned spacecraft could have more up its sleeve - 29 feet long and 15 feet wide body – other than requirements for technology trials. We do know the striking power of a military drone, a dreaded marvel of technology that can be remotely flown and primed to attack targets thousands of miles away. One would shudder to even think of such technology becoming space-based to destroy rogue satellites and spacecraft.

But, then again, there may equally be merit in the trials of the X-37B. As is being said about them, the idea is to learn how to quickly refurbish reusable spaceships for flight. Which leads us to assume that colonisation of space may not be such a far-fetched idea after all, but with such assumptions one can never tell for tomorrow is another day when new assumptions could sprout, given the secrecy of mankind’s space ventures. While Hawking portrays a rather simplified side of man’s troubles in present times, one cannot argue with what he says. The injudicious manner in which we use our natural resources could find us living in a vastly different world one day – one that would be totally different to what our predecessors enjoyed. Therefore, we hope that space experiments, secret or otherwise, are being conducted for the general good of mankind.