Mood:  spacey
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Practically everyone in the English speaking world has heard this famous phrase at least once in their lifetime. Neil Armstrong, of course, created these words. Neil Armstrong was one of many employees that worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly known as NASA. But NASA has definitely done more than give us a fancy quote.
NASA started out as a significant part of the Cold War. During the Cold War NASA took part in a major contest against the Soviet Union that later became known as the Space Race. Sputnik, the first satellite to ever be launched into Earth’s orbit, was launched by USSR. This was a great motivation for America to win the “Race.” NASA was able to put a manned space craft into Earth’s orbit, have space walks outside of the craft, and land crafts that were unmanned on the moon. The next step to take was to put man on the moon. NASA succeeded with this task July of 1969. Apollo XI was the module. The Space Race had ended, and the interest in the space program was ending just as fast.
Well, it’s 2005 and there are many people who believe that NASA should keep going with its space exploration. But there are also many others who believe that NASA is a waste of time and money. I believe that NASA should definitely continue with space exploration. There are so many wonderful things that NASA has created and discovered. It would be terrible to take all of that knowledge that many have spent decades to find.
Okay, so NASA has sent up some satellites, put man on the moon, and put various rovers on different planets. So what good does that do us? Well, satellites have definitely helped with communication. How else could we have cell phones? DSL Internet connection comes from satellites. DSL does stand for Direct Satellite Link. With satellites we are able to have GPS in our vehicles. Satellites have also enabled the government to spy on other countries.
In a wider range: NASA has helped the world. NASA has mapped the earth and given us pictures of the earth from a different view. We’ve found how hurricanes form, seen the climate change over time, and have been given mare accurate weather predictions. We have all this and more because of NASA.
So with all these amazing discoveries, we could only expect more and wonderful things to come out of NASA in the future. If we were to end space exploration, what good could we possibly gain from that? Why should we contain ourselves to just Earth’s atmosphere?
Michaelyn Everhart
12-6-05