I am always resistant to imparting any exceptionalism to our species, considering it some sort of narrow-minded parochialism based on the accident of the restricted perspective we have when we try to place ourselves in context with the rest of nature. But every time I look at at the achievements of our space programmes, I find it hard not take pride in our species' achievements in this domain (whatever else the horrible things we do): this is truly where our reach exceeds our grasp, but again and again and again we step up to the challenge and make our grasp meet our reach. On Wednesday, once again, we, as a species, will be reaching out from our cradle to grasp a speck of dust in the darkness of infinity, and in doing so will grow more as a species in a moment than we have in the past decade.
