Viewpoints Introduction to Space Exploration: Opposing

[Pages:4]Introduction to Space Exploration: Opposing Viewpoints

Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context, 2014 From Opposing Viewpoints in Context

"From the dawn of man until very recently, humans have been Earthbound, unable to reach even the clouds--let alone space. It's only within the last hundred years or so that the advent of manned flight and rocket ships has made the heavens attainable." --"Space Exploration,"

Conversations about space exploration in the early twenty-first century have focused on a variety of developing space industries not thought possible in any previous time or place. Governmentsponsored organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continue to improve technologies, including various roaming satellites, probes, and Mars rovers, for their own space missions. However, the private space industry--with its cost-effective, more efficient hardware--is primarily responsible for a number of forward leaps in the development of human space exploration. The principal areas of development-- space tourism, asteroid mining, perpetual thrust drives, and space colonization--all have been advanced and made famous chiefly by private space companies.

The idea of colonizing other planets has become an especially relevant and contentious subject with the rise of Elon Musk's private aerospace company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly referred to as SpaceX. Since its founding in 2002, the corporation has made international headlines mainly for developing its own reusable line of rockets, the Falcon 9, which it has employed, with varying degrees of success, to run contractual resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. Aside from these rocket launches, however, SpaceX has garnered just as much attention for Musk's enthusiasm for taking human beings to live permanently on Mars. He has claimed since the company's founding that he is determined to make humans an interplanetary species.

Musk said in an interview with Business Insider that his obsession with establishing a sustainable human residence on Mars began when, as a young man, he read popular science fiction works such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The Foundation series chronicles the troubles that follow the collapse of a great galactic empire. Musk stated that the series taught him that most civilizations eventually fall and that this destiny is likely awaiting the human race. What would people do if Earth becomes an unsustainable home? Musk asked himself. His answer was to become interplanetary, to create the capability not only to transport human beings to Mars but also to establish long-term dwellings for them there. Thus SpaceX, the manifestation of Musk's vision for humanity, was born, and Musk himself repeatedly expressed his desire to live out his final years on the red planet.

The ambition to make human beings a spacefaring race has been supported by some and derided by others. The idea did not originate with Musk; in the twenty-first century, as Musk was endeavoring toward Mars with SpaceX, scientists at NASA already had begun researching and conceptualizing the

human colonization of Venus, which, they claimed, would involve the installation of floating cities above the planet's hostile surface. Despite this, scientists roundly criticized Musk's lofty intentions of traveling to Mars and refuted his assertions about the effort's viability. Common counterarguments to Musk's reasoning mention the red planet's extreme cold, lack of atmosphere (which would protect a human population from cancer-causing cosmic radiation), frequent dust storms, and the exorbitant price of building strong, permanent settlements. Nevertheless, Musk pressed on, directing all of SpaceX's work toward Mars and ignoring outside disapproval of his plans.

One point on which Musk and the scientific community could generally agree was that Earth ultimately will become a hostile environment for humans. Scientists contend that the reasons for this inevitability are numerous. One threat to Earth's future is impact by an asteroid. About a third of the thousandmile-wide asteroids that will drift near Earth's orbit over the next several hundred million years will eventually strike the planet with the force of a thousand nuclear explosions. The result of such an impact would be the near total destruction of Earth.

Another guaranteed threat to life on Earth is the expansion of the sun that will occur in about a billion years, as the star's supply of hydrogen begins to deplete. As the sun grows, its temperature will increase dramatically, causing oceans and all other water on Earth to boil and evaporate. Without water, all living things on the planet will die in quick succession. Finally, Musk said, if the natural environment does not kill off the human race, people themselves will, either through overconsumption of Earth's natural resources or global nuclear war. Becoming interplanetary is not only achievable, Musk asserted, but also necessary to avoid the extinction of humanity.

Opposing Viewpoints: Space Exploration examines the issues currently facing the international community's forays into space. Authors of greatly diverse opinions discuss these issues in chapters titled "What Is the Role of Space Exploration in the Modern World?," "Where in Space Should Humans Explore?," "What Are the Politics of Space Exploration?," and "What Is the Science Behind Space Exploration?"

Further Readings

Books

Mark Albrecht Falling Back to Earth: A First Hand Account of the Great Space Race and the End of the Cold War. Lexington, KY: New Media Books, 2011.

Buzz Aldrin and Leonard David Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2013.

Christopher Barnatt 3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2013.

Lee Billings Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars. New York: Current, 2014.

Arlin Crotts The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Margaret Lazarus Dean Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2015.

Chris Hadfield An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything. New York: Little, Brown and Company,

2013.

Brian Harvey China in Space: The Great Leap Forward. New York: Springer, 2013.

Rick Houston Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986-2011. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Chris Impey Beyond: Our Future in Space. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.

Chris Impey and Holly Henry Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Marc Kaufman First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

W. Henry Lambright Why Mars: NASA and the Politics of Space Exploration. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.

John S. Lewis Asteroid Mining 101: Wealth for the New Space Economy. Moffett Field, CA: Deep Space Industries Inc., 2015.

Rob Manning and William L. Simon Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2014.

Carolyn Collins Petersen Astronomy 101: From the Sun and Moon to Wormholes and Warp Drive, Key Theories, Discoveries, and Facts About the Universe. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2013.

Claude A. Piantadosi Mankind Beyond Earth: The History, Science, and Future of Human Space Exploration. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Mary Roach Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch and David Darling We Are Not Alone: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life. Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications, 2010.

Erik Seedhouse Suborbital: Industry at the Edge of Space. New York: Springer, 2014.

Erik Seedhouse Virgin Galactic: The First Ten Years. New York: Springer, 2015.

Michael G. Smith Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2014.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

Ashlee Vance Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. New York: Ecco, 2015.

Roger Wiens Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity. New York: Basic Books, 2013.

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2016 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

Source Citation "Introduction to Space Exploration: Opposing Viewpoints." Space Exploration, edited by Michael Ruth, Greenhaven Press, 2016. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.apps/doc/EJ3010989101/OVIC?u=morr 11627&xid=5b657320. Accessed 30 Mar. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010989101

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