“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Grandfather said this phrase with a confident voice. It is always the case when we are up late night; sitting on the roof, my grandfather pretends to be Neil Armstrong. He starts to tell us all about that day in July 1969, at 10:56 p.m. EDT, more than half a billion people were watching television waiting for Armstronghim to put his foot on the moon. He is so excited in playing Neil Armstrong’s part, and he keeps saying that this step helped us to evolve in every aspect of our life. My grandfather’s passion about first manned space exploration always create some questions. Is it really worth the money spent on it? Is it safe to do it again and again? And what if we focus more on exploring the earth, can we come out with the same revelations at least in technology?
Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuouslly evolving and growing space technology. Space exploration is usually made by astronomers and telescopes. However, there are also physical explorations made either by men or robots.
Space exploration helps to address global challenges, that happens due to the cooperation between the international countries and organizations to deep the understanding of the processes that happens on Earth. Also, this partnership can adapts to fill the gaps between the developed and developing countries. For example, International Space Station partnerships, which includes 68 nations that have participated in International Space Station activities, bring benefits to participants, because if there are some kind of danger, the participant can warn each other.
According to many prominent Contemporary scientists, at the turn of the century we have seen a revolution in astronomy, which is very important than and it has become fundamental to many branches of sciences, and therefore modern technologies. It has the same influence as the revolution in physics, which occurred in the early twentieth century. Space technologiest have already played a huge rol in this development, as they provide the mean for research of many objects in the Universe.
NASA, in their publication called "benefits Stemming frome Space Exploration.", illustrate, that space technologies allow to study distant objects with telescopes placed outside the earth's atmosphere, they create many types of observations that are impossible from the ground. Spacecraft are able to convey scientific equipments to many of the objects in the solar system that we can study remotely, while being in close proximity to them, or we can make direct contact studies. Under the conditions of prolonged exposure to cosmic factors, like vacuum, weightlessness (or microgravity-induced micro-accelerations) on board of the spacecraft, scientists can conduct such biological and technological experiments that are absolutely imposible on the Earth "Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration."
Modern astrophysical space researches allows to obtain unique information about a very distant cosmological objects, and events that are ocurring during the birth of stars and galaxies. Livingston, in his article "Is Space Exploration worth the Cost?", says, that these researches provides the opportunity to make deep inroads in the study of the fundamental properties of matter, and to obtain new information on nuclear and quantum physics, relativity, space problems - time, etc (Livingston, "Is Space Exploration worth the Cost?").
Studying the effects of weightlesseness on living organisms and the physiological mechanisms of adaptation to it in space travel, and the study of the combined effect of weightlessness and other factors is very important for long flights, that are necessary for the exploration of the planets in the solar systems.
The use of lower organisms for biomedical experiments (as opposed to experiments on humans) provides more rigid performances, including the subsequent preparation of the biological material used. Studies of intracellular processes, cells, tissues, organs and organisms as a whole on automatic space vehicles have brought a series of very important results. Data was obtained on the absence of serious biological limits the length of stay living organisms and humans under space flight conditions. The prospects of the use of artificial gravity is to maintain optimal body condition and prevent it irreversible changes. Evidence of the need to strictly differentiated approach to the creation of simulators for different muscles and muscle groups of the human were proved.
Howell, in her article "What Are The Benefits Of Space Exploration?", states that space exploration has positive effects on technology and society. The most direct advantage originates from advances utilized on Earth that were initially spearheaded in space investigation, for example, NASA Spinoff program. Space exploration helped by discovering of spinoffs which truly brings lots of useful applications. Another popular benefit is job creation. Space exploration involves a network of different contractors, that help people to stay employed.Every space project generates new jobs and provide a positive impact on economy. Education is another advantage of space exploration. Space agencies always do conferences, that involve universities. Such education covers almost every type of science, as space exploration needs pioneer technologies (Howell, "What Are The Benefits Of Space Exploration?").
Bolden, in his article "Curiosity Takes Us Back to Mars.", believes, that space exploration is the most vivid example of the triumph of the human mind over rebellious matter. Since a man-made object first overcome gravity and developed enough speed to reach the Earth's orbit, it took only a little more than fifty years - nothing by the standards of history! Most of the world's population vividly remembers the days when the flight to the moon was considered something out of science fiction. Today the spacecraft not only travel through, successfully maneuvering in conditions of minimal gravity, but deliver cargo at the Earth's orbit, astronauts and space tourists. Moreover, durations of space flights can now be arbitrarily long: Russian astronauts on the International Space Station, for example, stay for 6-7 months. Over the past halfe century, peoples reached the Moon and took pictures of its dark side, created artificial satellites of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, recognized person distant nebulae with telescope called "Hubble" and now humanity is seriously thinking about the colonization of Mars (Bolden, "Curiosity Takes Us Back to Mars.").
On my precption , today travel into space are perceived as a matter of course, it is a must. Hundreds of satellites are flying above us and thousands of other necessary and useless objects are cruising the orbit, space tuourists are punctualy sent to surf the space. An era of commercial suborbital flights is about to begin, with almost two departures daily. Space exploration is controlled by devices: there are pictures of exploded stars, and HD-images of distant galaxies, and strong evidence of the possibl existence of life’s on other planets. Corporation already plan to build spacee hotels at the Earth orbit, and think about projects of colonization of neighboring planets. It is actually sounds like a passage from the novels. One things is clear: once we overcome Earths gravity, humanity will seek again and again up to the infinite worlds of stars, galaxies and universes. Our steps, defenatlly going to be leaps rather than just small steps !
Works Cited
Bolden, Charles. "Curiosity Takes Us Back to Mars." The White House. 06 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.
Howell Howell, Elizabeth. "What Are The Benefits Of Space Exploration?" Universe Today. 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.
Livingston, David. "Is Space Exploration worth the Cost?" The Space Review: Is Space Exploration worth the Cost? 21 Jan. 2008. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.
"Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration." NASA. NASA, Sept. 2013. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.
