Planck & Herschel

This is so smart: Planck and Herschel are orbiting L2, one of the two Lagrangian points really "close" to earth (just 5 lightseconds or 48.6 nanoparsecs away). I remember dimly that we should build space cities at the L-Points (there are 5 of them, I'd personally like to live on L4 or L5 - they seem to be really cool places!), since it's easy to stay in a stable orbit there. The physics behind L-Points is really simple, and very fascinating!
derStandard.at forum members have been questioning the meaning of Planck & Herschel missions. Let me answer them with a thought from Babylon 5: one thing is certain - at one point, our sun will go supernova, destroying Earth. If mankind wants to survive beyond that point (hehehe, if we even make it that far!), there is only one direction to go: space.