The Importance of Science Fiction in Astronomy

I think it is impossible for us at least to escape our own imaginations when trying to deal with these things. And there's something about space since it seems to me sort of always combines the futuristic and the archaic. So I mean in terms of actually being able to go beyond that and make contact with other life. Of course I don't sort of want to do the science fiction elements down because science fiction has a you know not a terrible track record in predicting technological inventions. You can find H.U. Wells predicted tanks or gene synchronous orbit well before it was achieved.