Pushing back the boundaries

So it seems they've found Nessie. After years of myths, legends and million dollar searches, she (or he) has been found at the bottom of Loch Ness looking forlorn and abandoned. Unfortunately for the Scottish tourist trade, this is not as exciting as you might think. The dinosaur is, in fact, a prop made for a film in 1969 which was built at great expense, put in the lake to be towed behind a boat, and promptly sank before any filming could be done.

What this story does reveal, however, is our increasing ability to explore, to push back the boundaries of what was previously considered unfathomable. You can book package tours to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, visit Antartica, even stay in an underwater hotel like a bond villain reading Jackie Collins novels and overindulging in the all you can eat buffet.

And now, with the successful landing of SpaceX last week, we are one step closer to being able to holiday in space. That would be an odd holiday - no pool, sunbathing is not recommended and the nightlife is terrible - but I can't say I'm not tempted. Holiday's are no longer about relaxation, but about discovery, about seeing things we have never seen before. How much more novel an experience could be achieved than actually leaving the planet. Of course, the jet lag would be unimaginable. How do you even define a day on an international space station, when sunrise and sunset are experienced every 45 minutes.

If we can find a movie prop at the bottom of a previously unchartable Scottish loch, however, then we can deal with a little chronological uncertainty. Why shouldn't we holiday in orbit, or on the moon, or even on Mars. Our human spirit is defined by curiosity. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but for humans it has led to cures for small pox and polio, advances in social awareness and the support of equality, and even a curious mechanism for the global sharing of pictures of cats.

So long live curiosity. And if a few of you are disappointed that the charting of Loch Ness will lead to a loss of mystery in our lives, that science will somehow replace romance with certainty, then don't worry. Space is big. The oceans are deep. For every boundary that we push back, new worlds are uncovered to explore, new questions exposed for us to answer. The mystery, as they say, is out there. And I, for one, want to explore it.