Emily Ambach
Mr. Willsey
A.P. Language and Composition,
Period 3
22 March 2012
The
Continuation of Space Exploration-A Blog
Recently,
all shuttle programs from NASA have been shut down. NASA claims they have done
this because there is not enough money to continue to fund these explorations
anymore. Though this tragedy has occurred, NASA is still finding other ways to
continue space exploration. However, the people working at NASA have directed
their attention to continuing space exploration by attempting to search for
extra-terrestrial life, which is not the most practical thing they could be
doing, and it is certainly not the smartest. If NASA truly seizes all other
space exploration and only focuses on trying to find other life forms, which
means no more searching for ways to have people be able to live on other
planets or galaxies in space, which is far more important than finding other
life besides us out there in the universe, this could have terrible outcomes
for humans in the next few hundred years.
The
continuation of space exploration. Not
to find other life forms, but to find livable conditions for humans. To search
for a way to bring humans into space. This is what should be top priority for
NASA. British Physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking argues in his lecture series “Why
We should Go Into Space” foe the 50th anniversary of NASA that
“spreading out into space… will completely change the future of the human race
and maybe determine whether we have a future at all”. Some people may argue
that we should be spending all of our money on ways to better the environmental
status of the earth. However, humans have already done so many things to the
environment, that it seems past the point of really being fixed. This is
exactly why we should be focusing all of our efforts and money into space
exploration. In a few hundred years, humans will have ruined the earth so much
to the point that it will no longer be inhabitable. If, by then, scientists
haven’t found other planets for humans to inhabit, the entire human race could
die out. At that point, nothing will matter. It won’t matter who had been
president a hundred years earlier, or when gas prices were incredible high, or
when America was going through the recession it is currently in. History of the
world would no longer matter. In order to keep the human race around for a
while, we need to make an attempt to create places for it to go, in case
something does happen to the earth where people could no longer inhabit it.
So,
contrary to popular belief of the general public, President Obama has not shut
down the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Instead, it is NASA
itself that has shut down their space shuttle programs, due mainly to lack of
funds, and taken a new direction in their exploration of space. A lot of people
do not see this as that big of a deal, because, after all, I’m sure people
generally find the idea of someday finding extraterrestrial life exciting, yet
this is the human race that is at stake. If the human race lost in the end and
did become extinct in the end, it would be a huge loss. Though I suppose it
would not be a big problem, seeing as we would all be dead, but I’m sure all
the other life that is somewhere out there would grieve for us because we would
have tried very hard to find them by then.
I
am not saying that the idea of possibly finding other life is not exciting, it
just shouldn’t be out top priority. Perhaps NASA could double-task and, while
they are looking for aliens, see if they can find any places that us humans could
live if something were to ever happen to us. Sure, NASA till puts satellites up
into space and onto Mars and such places to gather more about the living
conditions, however I do not believe it is enough. NASA should, once again, be
sending people into space to investigate things first hand, while others who
are working on earth can still try to find their aliens. And hey, who knows?
Maybe the aliens will be friendly and guide us to areas we could someday
inhabit when the time comes.
Shutting
down the space shuttle system was probably the worst decision ever made
regarding the exploration of space. Searching the galaxy for other signs of
life is not going to help us nearly as much as searching the galaxy and others
for planets similar to earth that can be inhabited by human beings. We are
slowly destroying the earth, and eventually, most likely within the next few
hundred years, it is going to get so bad and inhabitable to the point that
human beings will be forced to leave. In order to prevent that from happening,
all the money that is given to NASA by the government should toward finding
habitable places for humans.
