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David Grabowsky Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1102 Insert 5/19/14 Topic Proposal: Space Travel: Humanities fast approaching doom. Introduction/Overview The topic of this proposal that is of an interest to me is Space Travel, more specifically the fact that the human race has seemed to deprioritize space travel. Throughout the twentieth century the human race as a whole has taken a step back from space travel by cutting the funding and discontinuing many space programs, NASA being the most obvious example. The reasoning behind this is that the human race needs to invest itself in solving the problems on earth before it can take to space. That reasoning may seem sound but I will prove with this project that the before mentioned statement is actually dangerous and the polar opposite of how we should be investing ourselves. The human race does not need to become space fairing for simple amusement, but rather for the survival of the species. "Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive, says Carl Sagan, If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds." Prominent scientists agree that space travel is a necessity for the human race. One such reason is mass extinction from an impact. When mass extinction is said what is immediately brought to ones mind? Why the

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dinosaurs of course! Larry Niven states, The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right! Another scientist that agrees that space travel is a must if our species wants to survive. An impact that could cause a mass extinction is not that rare of an occurrence. In fact space objects such as asteroids have already come quite close to earth if not already impacted earth. Recently an asteroid of decent size made a flyby of earth. Designated 2012 DA14, the space rock is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) across, and astronomers are certain it will zip harmlessly past our planet on February 15but not before making history. It will pass within the orbits of many communications satellites, making it the closest flyby on record. The impacts thus far in humanities history have been small and of little true consequence, however that is simply blind luck. Tomorrow an asteroid the size of Hawaii could suddenly be dislodged from the asteroid belt and begin hurtling towards earth on a collision course. Then suddenly we would be no better than the dinosaurs, perhaps even worse because we would have the ability to count down the time until our extinction. To add to the increasing risk is the Chelyabinsk meteor which appeared suddenly on February 15th. The meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15 was the first videorecorded meteor known to cause substantial damage and injuries. It was the largest airburst on the planet since the famed Tunguska event in 1908, also in Russia. Divers recovered a coffeetable-size chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteorite weighing about 1,430 pounds (650 kilograms), the largest fragment unearthed yet, from the bottom of Russia's Lake Chebarkul on Oct. 16. The shockwave created by this meteor was capable of knocking people off their feet, shattering glass, and sending up to one thousand people to the hospital. If a meteor the size of a coffee table is

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capable of cause that much damage imagine what a meteor the size of a car or a building is capable of doing. Impacts from space are not humanities only reasons to take to the stars. Over population and the resource crisis also create compelling reasons why humanity must develop space travel. Lets face facts, the earth is a finite object. There is only so much stuff on earth and at the rate that humanity is growing and using this stuff there soon will not be much left. A lot of people are arguing that we should find better ways to use all of this stuff before investing in space travel, such as devoting ourselves to renewable resources or finding better ways to recycle. Renewable resources and recycling are both noble purists and will become mandatory in the future, however this does not solve the problem the human race is currently experiencing. The human race is experiencing unprecedented population growth. At the rate the human race is increasing there will not be enough stuff on earth to sustain us, even with renewable energy and recycling. Unless we figure out of to create matter out of energy we will soon be facing huge problems when earths limited resources are overcome by the expanding human population. The way I see it, there are three possibilities. First, the human race gets a handle on its population growth, implements some sort of measures to keep the population from increasing, if not flat out decrease it, through nonviolent means such as population laws. Second, the human race continues to grow at an exponential rate until we overcome the amount of resources available and fight each other for the limited few resources reaming or die like bacteria on a patria dish. Third, we expand our available resource pool by developing space travel and harvesting off world resources. This is where opinions come into play. The leading debate on space travel is that with our current technology the investment into space travel would be a pointless waste of resources. Our

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resources would be better spent on finding ways to prolong the resources available on earth. A supporter of this theory is the author, explorer and campaigner Robin Hanbury. Robin is seen opposing space travel on E&Ts debate for and against space exploration on the grounds that the benefit of space travel thus far has been extremely minor and that we should be focusing our efforts and better managing resources. The counter to this opinion is that prolonging the available resources on earth is only a stalling the real issue. Even if we find a way to prolong earths available resources, eventually the exponential growth of the population will overcome that amount. A surprisingly large supporter for the development of space faring craft is Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson. Richard Branson for the past few years has invested a lot of money in order to create the first commercial space craft. This space craft will take people into space for the price of two hundred thousand dollars. This is an extremely large step towards space travel, after all nothing booms like the commercial industry. If we never invest in the technology for space travel because it seems too futuristic to be made possible then nothing will ever get done and we will be stuck in this endless loop doomed to either go the way of the dinosaurs or the way of bacteria. To discover the vast majority of this information is simply looked online. I googled topics such as the necessity of space travel and found many articles written by scientists about how unless we develop a space program then we will be no better than the dinosaurs. NASA.gov was of course a huge source. They have a lot of articles encouraging space exploration as well as explaining the necessity for space travel. There was also on article on airspacemag.com that stated, First, most of us want to be, both as individuals and as societies, the first or the best in some activity. We want to stand out. This behavior is rooted in our genes. We are today the descendants of people who survived by outperforming others. Without question that drive can be

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carried to an unhealthy extreme; weve all seen more wars than we like. But just because the trait can be taken too far doesnt mean that we can do without it completely. A second reason is curiosity. Who among us has not had the urge to know whats over the next hill? What child has not been drawn to explore beyond the familiar streets of the neighborhood? That big block of text said to me that humanity should seek to accomplish space travel to continue the genetically coded drive to outperform one another, and as Star Trek so perfectly put it, To boldly go where no man has gone before. Another source of information would be the International Space Hall of Fames website. This website contained a database of many of the leading scientists who had something to do with space. On this website I found some good quotes and arguments from Carl Sagan regarding the necessity of space travel as well as Stephen Hawking. I also found good quotes from izquotes.com, specifically the one from Larry Niven which was about the dinosaurs space program. I actually want to look into the source of this quote which originated from Meeting of the minds: Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke. National geographic provided a good article regarding asteroids that have been passing increasingly closer to earth on the website page news.nationalgeographic.com. Space.com provided an excellent article detailing the increasing risk of asteroid impact as well as the potential damage such an impact could cause. The article also cited the recent Meteor that exploded over Russia last year.

Initial Inquiry Question(s) If the human race does not develop space travel soon, is it doomed? Why is space travel not a priority? What will happen if space travel is not developed in the next 200 years?

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My Interest in this Topic I was originally interested in this topic because of the romantic zeal that is associated with space travel. Getting to roam around the universe discovering who knows what it all sounded pretty exciting to me. Also I just have a curiosity about the multiple objects located in space such as stars and planets and ort clouds. However as I did research I noticed that space is not really a topic that had a lot of controversy about it, besides scientific controversy such as the big bang theory, and I did not think writing an essay about scientists arguing about the big bang theory would be very interesting. So I kept on just randomly searching through space related stuff and eventually came upon a game I played called Dead Space. Basically the game is about space mutant zombies and slaughter and the usual generic stuff. However the part that I thought was pretty interesting was the concept of planet cracking. In this future set game the earth of course had run out of resources. To solve this the people of earth created giant ships which would go to other resource rich worlds and literally break a chunk of the planet off and haul it back to earth. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. I then began looking into the resource crisis which might be solved by space travel. This then brought me to more space travel related topics such as the complications of space travel, which in turn brought me to the necessity of space travel and mankind approaching doom. And thus my topic proposal was born. I guess it could be said that this was all a long chain of space related interest that brought me to my final topic. Also the urgency and necessity of the topic in question lead me to search out more information about it. Well, before I did any research I did not know that much about space travel other than the sci-fi stuff that I had seen in movies and video games. Even now I do not really have a grasp on what it would be required to achieve space travel, so I hope to learn about that. I hope to learn

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more about the supporters of space travel as well as the nay sayers. The progress currently being made towards space travel would also be a nugget of knowledge I would like to acquire. Before this research I already knew that we had created a vehicle capable of space travel that had made it to the moon and back. I also already knew about the population/resource crisis. I knew there were hundreds of satellites orbiting earth as well as a space station. I hope to learn more about potential meteor impacts, leading researchers of space travel, and the time scale for the consumption of resources on earth. Next Steps I intend to continue my research by searching the CNN.com website for articles related to space travel and the resource crisis. Actually the resource crisis is a really big part of my argument so I need to do a lot of research into that. Specifically I want to try to find someone of merit who has already written an argument for how space travel could solve the resource crisis. When our class has those library days I of course intend to use those for the purpose of research. Actually I can probably find a good book by Stephen Hawking with arguments for space travel in it. I intend to further explore a lot of the websites I mentioned before such as NASA.com of space.com as they both held a lot of potential arguments for space travel. Also I want to look into the government website and see if government officials have voiced their opinions on the space program. I also did not find a lot of information on foreign space programs. Most of the information I found was centered on NASA. I remember vaguely hearing a comment that India had launched a robotic drone of some type to Mars so I intend to do some research into that as well as other space programs.