AI: Space
By Earlier this week Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, passed away at the age of 82. This made me sad for a couple of reasons: one, that an awesome human being isn’t around any more, and two, that the number of people who’ve made it to other worlds is slowly diminishing and looks set to continue that way. While human space exploration is only one part of the puzzle, I believe it’s also an integral part.
A common response to space exploration is that it’s useless and the money spent on it would be better spent elsewhere. That’s quite obviously wrong (not least because NASA’s budget is relatively small), but it’s a PR problem shared by a number of scientific fields. And that’s not even mentioning the moon landing deniers…
Are you interested in space exploration? What do you think has been its greatest achievement? What do you think the future holds for NASA and other organisations? Would you actually want to go into space yourself?
The Afternoon Inqueery (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Queereka community. Look for it to appear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, at 3pm ET.
(Featured image by The NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre on Flickr)
This made me fairly sad as well, but also because it has largely been ignored by the media. Whitney Houston’s passing is STILL being talked about by the media, but a man who literally WALKED ON THE MOON dies and he barely gets a nod on the nightly news.
I’m not angry about that at all…
But to address the question, I freaking LOVE what NASA has been doing lately. I would have to say that Curiosity’s landing (as well as every other Mars rover) is definitely up there with the Apollo Moon landings, but the latter definitely takes the cake. However, a manned mission to Mars isn’t that far off, and that would easily be one of the most significant achievements in all of human history. I would totally sign up for a mission to Mars when I get older, even if it were a one way trip!