Space Exploration: A Journey Across the Moon - Research Paper

Introduction

In today's paper we want to look at the benefits of space exploration commonly known as space travel, and before we embark on a beautiful journey across the moon let's find out what we mean when we say space exploration. It may have different definitions, but simply we may say it is, the outer space physical exploration by both the robotic space crafts or human space flights. While astronomy which is the, 'objects observation in space' and in recorded history it predates to a century back. This dates to the early 21st century where rocket engines of large liquid fuel were developed so as to allow space travel to become a practical probability. Advancing scientific research may be comprised of exploring space for common rationales, ensuring the future survival of humanity by uniting different nations (Hoffman 1997). Even politics or specifically geopolitics rivalry have been used as an alternative competition for space travel such examples being the Cold War.

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With the 'Cold War' space exploration during the early periods was a vehicle of something called 'Space Race' and this was amid the Soviet Union and the United States. The first man-made object launch to orbit the Earth, on 4th October 1957 the USSR Sputnik 1 made its way to orbit and on 20th July 1969 the American Apollo 11 craft landed on the moon becoming the first of its kind to do so. And these events literally reserved as the borders for this primary period. The first milestones were achieved by the Soviet Union, in 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the original fellow to be put in space on-board Vostok 1.

With continued space milestones, the Salyut 1 was the initial space station propelled by the Soviets in 1971. A shift from one-off flights to renewable hardware and the exploration of the first 20 years, there was example such as Space shuttle program and as with the International Space Station, there was finally cooperation from the competition. Space tourism also came on the table when promotion began from private interests and this was from the 1990s onwards. After 2010 missions to the Moon and possibly Mars got advocated by large government programs. However, there has been no absence of criticism in the space travel fields and this is mainly done on the cost of the whole affair and on safety grounds, but these programs get support from citizens of many countries.

Benefits of Space Exploration to People

Now that we are all familiar with what space exploration is and a little history of its origin now let's look at the benefits of exploring space to the earth's environment and to the people of earth. One of the importance of space travel that people tend to ignore is the significance it has had on the global communication arena. In this globalized world, what is necessary is effective communication, when friends or relatives need to touch all angles of the world it is so easy to see why the global communication is vital (Bainbridge, 514-522). Another important thing to note is that to cope with the trends of the ever-changing world be able to guide your community or organization to higher heights of the global telecommunication and this is, in fact, is proof that the space exploration program is important to the world.

It is not only global communication that is significant to space exploration but there are a lot more benefits to the same, another one was the 'Space Shuttle Main Engines' program, stimulating different solar power plants. An SSME would kick on in temperatures as little as -423F (217C) and scorch as boiling as 6,000 F. it was built for NASA who took the familiarity of functioning with superheated constituents and spun it into a 110-megawatt solar plant which controls 7500 households in Nevada. There is another benefit of space travel and this is also an initiative done by NASA, Unique Logic created a game that helps you learn to pay attention by monitoring your brainwaves. They wanted pilots to have an automated system that could tell if they were distracted. If a pilot wandered too far off task the flight simulator would release more controls to manual - forcing them to focus.

There are more benefits to space travel and we will discuss them in the following part, a positive impact is the creation of technology as we know it now, and this is the first step which is just the surface. The invention of this technology is a positive impact at the surface potential will be seen and someone will use it for trading and the commercial market will eventually get hold of it and make it available for everyone. This ultimately means that there will be an emergence of companies which will be producing, transporting and selling them and which in fact create employment opportunities thus influencing the economy in a positive way.

Women in Space Exploration

After looking at the importance of space travel, we will now embark on issues that face the space exploration program based on the basis of gender. Yes, we want to look at women in the program and how it has positively affected the field of space exploration and women in general. First, at the history, the time of the Apollo 11 liftoff there were very few women in the control center and the ones that were there were just secretaries (Launius,2004). The only woman engineer JoAnn Morgan who was in the Firing Room, and played major roles in the launch party for NASA like the communications, information systems, and instrumentation services during programs of human spaceflights in early agency's period. Later JoAnn Morgan became a senior executive becoming the first woman at Kennedy as a Business Development and External Relations director retiring in 2003.

When the Space Shuttle Program was being started in the late 1970s NASA began to recruit a new strain of astronauts called "mission specialists" the main focus on these shuttle missions would not be learning to pilot jets rather it would be on the payloads. There were also hiring engineers, scientists, and physicians by not hiring only pilots as it was in prior time. This group also included the first women and other ethnic groups of people which was the most diverse crowd of that time. This in fact encouraged female students in our colleges to pursue STEM careers (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) which sets their future paths and passion.

Conclusion

In summary, many people and astronauts who have been within NASA by watching missions have spoken about being inspired like the Apollo 11 liftoff. There are even more benefits like the methane finding on Mars and exoplanet discovery and the International Space Station being constructed to do studies on long-term exploration. And with all this space travel the human race encyclopedia can be added some knowledge.

Work Cited

Launius, Roger D. Frontiers of space exploration. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.

Bainbridge, William Sims. "Motivations for space exploration." Futures 41.8 (2009): 514-522.

Hoffman, Stephen J., and David I. Kaplan. "Human exploration of Mars: the reference mission of the NASA Mars exploration study team." (1997).