Europa

March 21, 2054

Setting up the drill location is taking a frustratingly long time. Operating this equipment in the low gravity of Europa wearing heavy space suits is much more difficult than it was on Earth.

The pretty side of me wants to say that it would be going faster if I was there, but I know damn well that's not true.

The time I've spent on base camp with Lee has not been too bad. There is a lot of dead time, because the drones and rovers take forever to charge. On the base we don't rely on our solar panels, using a small nuclear to provide our power. However, coming to base to recharge is too inefficient so the rovers must rely on the limited power of the sun.

The fact the sun can power anything from this distance is quite incredible. Even the fact that it basically provides energy to all life on Earth is absurd the more you think about it. As a living creature you don't give it a lot of thought. The sun is warm, and it is light. From our perspective it has always been there and always will be.

The more you think about it, the more life on Earth begins to feel absurd. The sun is quite simply a gigantic ball of fire, with a diameter ten times that of even Jupiter that emits light and heat that brightens the days on Earth a little less than 100 million miles away. All life functions by harvesting and recycling that energy from a star that's millions of miles away, and yet the entire sky was brightened by the star. In fact, if Earth was closer to the star, it's life would burn.

Considering all the factors that were in play to make life on earth possibly made it feel pretty implausible that life on another planet could truly exist. Still, from another point of view it was so crazy that it makes you wonder what other conditions can make for an environment where life thrives. Just because Earth's conditions make it perfect for life does not mean it is the only combination that works.

It really makes you think about how empty or populated the universe truly is.