On my first day I sat down with my übermanager / end of level boss for a chat. The first thing he said was, "the nice thing about this place is, we don't actually have to make a profit". It was so relaxing to hear those words, having worked in a high pressure environment for the previous five or so years. Not that my previous job had been unfriendly, but it seems that commercial pressure usually works its way through all of any organisation, and a fair chunk of it ends up on the ultimate producers of the product — in this case, software developers.

Anyway, while my job is a consultancy of sorts with lots of different potential projects, I am working alongside lots of physicists, in a physicsy environment. I've attended a few 'general interest' lectures and it's reminded me of my twelve-year-old sense of wonder at the Universe — 'Space is big. Very big.' &c. I can't believe that I ever forgot it, but it's been dormant for at least ten years, waiting for an excitable chap with a beard and a picture of the Hubble Deep Field to remind me that the rest of the Universe exists and how amazing it all is. (In fact, there's a parallel with my recent rediscovery of singing but I'll leave that for another occasion).

I remember as a twelve-year-old, thinking about how much space exploration would occur within my lifetime. Then, it even seemed plausible that a probe might get to Alpha Centauri and be able to send a response before I got too old. But the world lost interest in space exploration, and so did I.

More recently, I cheered on the brave robots (Cassini and Huygens) as they went on their cold lonely mission to outer space. I can't help thinking of them as lonely, even though they are pretty simple machines and not really thinking of anything. It's almost like a strange telepresence. When I saw the Huygens pictures of Titan, I imagine what it would be like to be in a bubble hovering above it. It's exciting but cold, if I was there I would be the furthest human from the planet, millions of miles away from my fellow ape descendants.

I'm fascinated by this in so many ways: childish excitement at all the new stuff that's out there to be discovered, an interest in the engineering required to make it happen, the science of deducing the history of the solar system and universe from the data, and some pride that humans can extend some presence out to the other planets (however feeble it is at present). I cheered out loud today when I found out that the Hayabusa probe has probably managed to collect some asteroid material.

Next time you have a chance, on a clear night, lie on your back and look at the stars.