I don’t want to admire these discoveries to much because I’m disappointed that Ill never see them in person in my life time.
Fair enough. Maybe it's a result of overexposure to the science-fiction culture, or something, I don't know. But I agree that you're basically
getting a slice and wishing you had the whole pie. Maybe try coming at it from a different angle.
Astronomy isn't about traveling to the stars -- it never was. It's about observation, learning, expanding our perception and our knowledge.
Astronomers can tell you what a pulsar looks like, and I'm not just talking about a Hubble photograph. Astronauts can't. Rockets are for engineers,
chemists, physicists and the like. Granted, I'm sure plenty of astronomers would just be dying to hitch a ride on the next shuttle launch, but
that's not the focus of their field. What astronauts do today was made possible hundreds of years ago by astronomers. That doesn't mean you have to
laugh at Galileo and say, "Pshh, big deal, so you're looking at the moon through a telescope. It's not like you can GO there."
Why feel disappointed at what the future holds, just because it's in the future? You could probably go to Mars in your lifetime if you played your
cards right. And suppose you COULD go to a distant star system. Why stop there? At that point you could complain that there aren't any Earth-like
planets. And if you found a system with an Earth-like planet you could complain that there aren't any aliens. And if you found some aliens you could
complain that you can't go to a different galaxy, or go outside the Universe, or go backwards in time.
Personally, I still think this news is freakin' awesome. Here's why:
Ever since the notion of alien worlds existed within the human imagination, if somebody said, "Alien worlds, huh? Show me." ... all we could do was
talk about it, or paint a picture, or watch a sci-fi movie.
Now, for the first time ever, we can point at these photos, and say, "There."
