Space And Space Essay

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Matthew Hoffman Professor Theis English 104 12:30-1:45 04/5/14 English 104: research paper The influence of space flight on the development of human society: why we should keep going to space As far back as we as a species can remember, space and the stars have always held specific place in our culture. In many religions the stars are held as the birthplace or homes of the gods, in science it is the panicle of the unknown. It the epitome of what we perceive as “out of reach”. But our understanding of the stars and space in general has changed dramatically over the course of the last few centuries. The more we’ve looked up, the more we recognize out place in this universe. But in the last hundred years, our understanding of space has grown exponentially. But no moment more than in 1969, when a small collection of brave men stepped outside of our known world. To the moon. The overall effects of this event was far more than bragging rights over the Russians, it was the singular turning point in what we believed we were truly capable of. In the years after this spectacular event many things happened, our understanding of space, and our perception on our home planet changed dramatically. However one of the things that happened was that we lost focus on further exploration, it was decided that space was no longer relevant to our daily lives and thus NASA’s funding was reduced. It was decide that other matters were more important. This however is not completely true, while some immediate matters are more important than furthering space exploration, it is not deserving of the sheer amount of budget cuts it has received. Not NASA specifically but space exploration general, has such a large sphere of influence that it’s difficult to percei... ... middle of paper ... ... made it across from one country to the other was often controlled by either the government or by media sources, and even then it took weeks for information to spread across the country to effectively become general knowledge. However now with our massive network of communication satellites, important information can spread like wildfire almost instantaneously. The barriers between countries become less solid, as people are able to communicate. The national community has in recent years become more and more a global community of citizens, all talking, all sharing. I even have a few friends in the UK as well as Switzerland, who I keep in regular contact with via communication applications such as Skype. None of these things would be possible without the capacity to launch satellites into space, or the ability to send strong reliable real time signals long distances.

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