This video details the journey of the Phoenix Mars mission, which is literally a rebirth; an enormous financial and technological loss occurred in 1997 when the Mars Polar Lander was lost. The main goals of the Phoenix are to make biological discoveries, and hopefully, finding out more about the factors of life on Mars will help us to understand them better here on our own planet, and everywhere else as well.
With the financial and technological losses that have occurred and could potentially occur again in the future in mind, are the billions of dollars spent on our space missions worth it?
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Discoveries of Water on Mars
This video shows some of the important discoveries made from observing pictures taken from Mars orbiters that NASA has sent. There are many possibilities as to how this information can be used in the present and in the future. These discoveries are over a year old, so they aren't even completely recent, and already sending spacecrafts to Mars has yielded us beneficial information which lead to a better understanding of our next-door neighbor in space.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
From Space Race to Space Travel
Although the study of astronomy has existed for many centuries, actual space travel has only really existed in the past fifty years or so, beginning with the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. At first, this was mainly a matter of pride, staking the two dissimilar governments against each other to see which one was better and could reach the farthest into space. There are many implications in today's world of space travel on the economy.
Space missions cost billions of dollars--NASA spent $40 billion on the Apollo missions, but the cost of these missions was borne as a matter of national pride and ambition during the space race to the moon, and it afterwards quickly became so unacceptable to spend such a large amount of money that the series was curtailed. Military possibilities and interests allowed the continuation of the Skylab program, and shuttles proved to be useful.
Now, as we look to the present and the future of space travel programs, it seems that space settlement is becoming a major goal, which may be in part due to the realization that Earth's resources are limited; the damage we're inflicting upon Earth, combined with the other impending damages from other causes, is highly difficult to reverse, and perhaps eventual settlements in space could help us to explore and find resources elsewhere in space. For example, it appears highly likely that there will be [manned] missions to Mars within the next twenty years (probably less).
Lots of progress is being made in space technology all the time, and it seems that the U.S. government will try to spend more in the NASA programs with the goal of reaching Mars, along with other important missions. Eastern countries such as China and India have also been recently contributing to the space travel efforts. It seems that the advantages of space travel are spreading around the world, and perhaps its usefulness will motivate us to find out more about our solar system, our galaxy, and our universe.
Space missions cost billions of dollars--NASA spent $40 billion on the Apollo missions, but the cost of these missions was borne as a matter of national pride and ambition during the space race to the moon, and it afterwards quickly became so unacceptable to spend such a large amount of money that the series was curtailed. Military possibilities and interests allowed the continuation of the Skylab program, and shuttles proved to be useful.
Now, as we look to the present and the future of space travel programs, it seems that space settlement is becoming a major goal, which may be in part due to the realization that Earth's resources are limited; the damage we're inflicting upon Earth, combined with the other impending damages from other causes, is highly difficult to reverse, and perhaps eventual settlements in space could help us to explore and find resources elsewhere in space. For example, it appears highly likely that there will be [manned] missions to Mars within the next twenty years (probably less).
Lots of progress is being made in space technology all the time, and it seems that the U.S. government will try to spend more in the NASA programs with the goal of reaching Mars, along with other important missions. Eastern countries such as China and India have also been recently contributing to the space travel efforts. It seems that the advantages of space travel are spreading around the world, and perhaps its usefulness will motivate us to find out more about our solar system, our galaxy, and our universe.
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