INTERSTELLAR – A Review by Matt O'Donnell

I grew up loving space. Outer space. That day I first pointed my telescope at Jupiter and Saturn, seeing the Great Red Spot, the bands, the rings, the moons ... these wanderers in the heavens looked more like paintings in the sky. I'll never forget the utter joy and happiness I felt when I first saw them. And how it changed me.

So yeah, I went to see Interstellar. How could I not? My review in a moment. No spoilers, either.

NASA is always fighting to prove its relevancy, ever since the honeymoon of wowing the world and landing a human being on the Moon ended. Why are we spending so much money to float things into space? Isn't it too dangerous? Shouldn't we be spending taxpayers dollars for people at home? Don't we belong here?

Sure, NASA has proven to act like a bloated bureaucracy at times, which is typical when you are part of a massive institution known as the US federal government. When I saw Interstellar this week, I felt as if Christopher Nolan summed up in so few words why NASA has been reaching past our planet's atmosphere - and why the agency, and more broadly we as a planet, should continue.

"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt." - Cooper

The Kardashev scale, proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in the 1960's, classifies human civilizations this way:

Type I: Able to utilize all of its home planet's resources

Type II: Able to utilize the energy of the star in its home solar system

Type III: Able to utilize the energy of its home galaxy

The great theoretical physicist Michio Kaku (whom I had the distinct pleasure in meeting one day years ago) says we may not even reach full Type I status until sometime well after 2100 AD. Yes, we as a human race have a long way to go. Don't let all of those iPhones, Segways and wrinkle-free jeans fool you. Our civilization is barely an infant when it comes to advancement.

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INTERSTELLAR - A Review by Matt O'Donnell