So, if any of you know me well, you know by now that in addition to my obsession with Animation, I'm also a space nut, and believe that Humanity needs to focus more efforts on scientific endeavors then almost any other funding. Yuri Gagarin set out on a 1 hour and 48 minute journey that would change the way we view our planet forever, and setting in motion a new era of exploration, that over 500 men and women have followed in the years since then. Additionally, This is the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program, and the last planned year of flights. Ironically, at these two great anniversary's there isn't much to look forward to in the space program at this time. This is the final year of planned space shuttle flights. After this, the Soyuz program will be the only Transportation for Humans going to orbit. Obama has scrapped the Constellation program wasting billions of dollars of work done on ALREADY CONSTRUCTED vehicles and technology, that was only just starting to come to fruition, Ensuring that we will not be returning to the Moon for at least another decade or moving onwards to Mars. < scrapped So, as much as this is a celebration, I'd also like us to discuss what the future holds for space, and if you care, help support the future of space travel simply by letting people know what's going on in the news, and prevent it from being cut off entirely.
As much as I love Space and the stars and such, there really isn't much helpful to us that we can reach at this point in time. Essentially you could say space exploration is useless for the sole exception of gathering knowledge about the rest of the universe. I personally would rather have funding be used on a more pressing matter first, like the chances of a collision with some foreign object. There are only ideas of ways to prevent a giant chunk of rock from destroying the Earth. The last time I checked, we don't really have any viable means of protecting the Earth from something like that. >> After we get that problem solved, it'd be much more reasonable to go out sending more crafts into space. In short, keeping the Earth from getting obliterated by object in space > space travel. That's my opinion and I'm pretty sure not many would see things that way. I know there's some organization that's supposed to keep track of anything that looks like it could possibly collide with the Earth one day but that's not really useful until there's a way to stop it. >>
Actually, this. Personally, I find space travel really fascinating, but do we really have any sort of viable plan in case of a collision? Whilst we may have missiles and nuclear war heads to possibly blow up the object, there's still the repercussions of using them on a space object; green house gases would just further destroy the ozone layers, and there's no need to even describe how cataclysmic nuclear radiation in our atmosphere would be. Maybe (and this is a stretch), some of the leading countries in space exploration could build a satellite to ward off such threats? Again, this is purely ideas, and I should probably stop typing before I get even more ranty. :/
Actually, nuclear weapons are not powerful enough to blow up most of the objects that are large enough to cause any kind of damage to the Earth. The only ideas I've heard of to prevent a collision involve moving the object slowly over time. So an explosion would have to be offset to slightly change the course of something...which would have to be done years in advance for the effects to be noticible. << Anyyywayyyssss...on the topic of exploration, while I'm glad it's the 50th anniversary of the first man in space, I'm also a little disappointed that us humans haven't gotten very far out. We've only landed on the Moon, right? Guess I shouldn't expect much more but still...
Well there's large holes in our detection system for meteors as well... That's why I believe it's paramount that we establish self sustaining bases on the Moon and Mars, and begin the process of Terraforming Mars as well, although I don't anticipate that happening in my lifetime. Interestingly enough though, I went to go look at One of my favorite new companies, SpaceX and this month they've announced Falcon Heavy WILL be within Human Safety Standards set by NASA and TLI/TMI (Trans Lunar/Mars Injection) capable, meaning, if they pull this off, Return Missions to the Moon and first steps towards becoming an Interplanetary species will begin, now unhindered by governmental seating changes and restructuring of program plans every eight years. They've also achieved the lowest pound to orbit/cost ratio ever as well, at about $1000 per pound, which sounds like a lot, but comparatively, it's cheap. a 3 man crew and suits would cost less then a million dollars to send up to the station, (not including fuel and other stuff of course, but a whole lot cheaper and more viable then the Space Shuttle Program)
"there really isn't much helpful to us" doesn't really take into account the Idea that we might actually discover things on our missions of scientific exploration...
