Man's Obsession with Speed

Ever wondered why man is obsessed with speed? Wait, what? Man isn’t obsessed with speed – it’s just a phase – every man grows out of it and becomes a suburban dad who teaches his daughters to drive slowly. Well, when we zoom out and look at the big picture – the first automobile that travelled at 16kmph and around 125 years later, our fastest speed is – prepare to drop your jaws - 440kmph!! [If you haven't dropped your jaws, here’s a little historical time reference –The wheel was invented around 4500BCE - so it took forever to go from wheel to slow-ass automobile] So, here’s where we conclude that man indeed is obsessed with speed.

 It must have all started with his own two feet – He realized that he can run faster than some wild animals chasing him and sought out to find what all creatures he can outrun (that’s a part of bloody history interlaced with stupidity we don’t want to discuss). Running races with fellow humans began as an ego boost. Lets take a break and image prehistoric man say this in Barney Stinson*'s voice:

And along with technology racing started getting out of hand – Tour de France, NASCAR, Formula 1, etc. As man began to understand physics better – his need to be a better, nay superior human being started growing stronger. Wow, the things we do for an ego boost.

Although we can travel faster than anybody could ever imagine in the last century, we still want to travel faster than we now can. How much faster can we travel before we start travelling through time? Is that our ultimate goal – to become time travelers? Or to apparate – which can be really useful to magically flit out of embarrassing situations or those of criminal kind – Holy f**k! The smarter we get, the more evil we become!! (Or is it just me? :-O) 

Now may be the time to plunge head-first into some possibilities of travelling at the speed of light. FTL (Faster than light) is not an alien** term for physicists and space travel enthusiasts. Travelling at FTL, although still possible to achieve – could take us many more years to physically implement. Accelerating masses such as whole space shuttles to achieve speeds to 300,000,000 kmph is more than a bit of a challenge. [For reference – ISS orbits at 7700 kmph] It is going to interesting to wait for scientists to try to achieve FTL speeds and then we can race through space and break more records and warp time?
       

                                                       

*- If that name is unfamiliar, stop reading and return after watching 8 seasons of How I met your mother (season 9 is worth skipping).

**- pun intended  

{I have been meaning to ask tp to write something about his views on time travel and the origins of the universe - that would be part -2 of Man's obsession with speed - The Space Race}