Comparison of the State of Space Exploration/Exploitation between 1960 and 2010



Comparison of the State of Space Exploration/Exploitation between 1960 and 2010

Introduction

Nowadays, there is a group of exploration supporters that even see problems with the way the space program is being handled now. "New Space advocates believe programs are too big, too expensive, and too slow.” Many of these "New Space" supporters believe that opening the space frontier to entrepreneurs and investors will open up a whole new side to exploring the unknown. As of the past year, and the retirement of the space shuttle earlier this year; it seems to be progressing toward that direction. However, with private investors taking over exploration, and the government being slowly taken out of the equation, many people wonder if the future of exploration could be put into the wrong hands. On the other hand, many people argue that organizations like NASA have changed the world as we know it. In this paper, we try to focus on the State of Space Exploration. The paper highlights from 1960 and 2010. The paper will compare both 1960 and 2010 of state Space Exploration.

History

U.S. and European space exploration advocates of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s promoted the idea of conquering, exploiting, and colonizing outer space. Among the best known of these advocates are the Russian-Soviet space flight theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the U.S. rocket builder Robert Goddard, and Germany's Werhner von Braun. Tsiolkovsky was influenced by the late 19th century Russian mystic philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, who believed that humanity was intended to leave Earth and spread out into space.

Other early advocates of space colonization included science fiction author Olaf Stapledon, who asserted that humankind should colonize other planets to exploit their resources for Earth's benefit, and rocket designer Krafft Ehricke, who claimed that it was humankind's destiny to expand throughout the universe. In the 1950s, books such as journalist Willy Ley's 1959 The Conquest of Space , with illustrations by space artist Chesley Bonestell, and a series of articles in Collier's magazine (also illustrated by Bonestell) titled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” helped to popularize the idea of colonizing other worlds. The Walt Disney Company played a role in this popularization as well (Clarke, 1951).

In the 1960s, U.S. and Soviet human space flight programs and the race to land on the moon kept public attention focused on the idea of human expansion into space. In the 1970s, the idea of colonizing space got a major boost from physicist Gerard K. O'Neill (1927-1992), then at Princeton University. O'Neill presented his ideas for building human colonies in outer space to futurists, aerospace professionals, public audiences, and even the U.S. Congress. O'Neill conceived of massive human colonies suspended in space at so-called libration points between the Earth and the moon, lunar mining outposts designed to produce construction materials for human communities in space, and space-based generation of solar power to fuel these communities. At a time when concerns about rapid population growth, limited Earth resources, waning fossil energy supplies, ...