The Benefits Of Asteroids

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is perhaps the most well known space agency in the world. Since its formation in 19581, it has pioneered in space science, yet is also renowned for its large budget. NASA has the highest budget of any space agency, $18.6 billion2 in 2015, the equivalent of every American paying $54 towards the agency3, meaning 0.14% of total GDP is spent on NASA3 . This money is spent on the ISS, sending astronauts, probes and satellites into space, astrophysics and planetary science research, maintaining and developing NASA’s space telescopes (the Wide Field Infrared Survey telescope searching for dark energy and exoplanets, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope) and developing spacecraft2. Space exploration is an incredibly expensive process with one shuttle launch costing $450 million4 however NASA’s colossal budget benefits the USA greatly; the agency employs 18,000 people5 as astronauts, engineers, scientists and teachers and G. Scott Hubbard, former director of the NASA Ames Research Center estimates that every dollar spent on NASA returns $8 to the economy6.While this figure is an estimate, it demonstrates NASA’s worth and capacity for money making. NASA works on pioneering research and as its patents and licenses return to the US treasury, it

For many years humans have been exploring space to discover the unknown and fuel their curious and adventurous nature, but the decision of whether space exploration is worth the cost is strongly debated. Due to various arguments and evidence space exploration is strongly supported is proven to be worth the cost. Some of these reasons include space exploration being able to expand our knowledge and it being able to generate wealth. With these reasons the argument of whether space exploration is worth the risk can be easily decided.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is one of the leading organizations in space technology and research. In the past 60 years, NASA has sent numerous satellites, telescopes and crew modules into space. Despite drawbacks in launch failures and lack of funding, NASA continues to focus on its mission in space exploration and technological advancement. One of NASA’s projects is to explore deep space, in which entails a manned missions to Mars, exploration of the asteroid belt, and beyond. With these goals in mind, NASA has engineered new rocketry and even created a program to better allocate costs of such conquests. With these new advancements, NASA has created a new age of how space travel is carried out.

Neil Armstrong 's 1969 lunar landing was one of humanity 's greatest accomplishments. Since then, we have found that an infinite supply of knowledge and resources await us just outside our atmosphere. Today, however, critics are beginning to argue more and more that the cost of space exploration is too high, and therefore new technological developments should be left to the private sector. Whether funded privately or by the government, funding of space exploration is imperative because NASA is essentially the only agency with the technological capabilities to support aircraft manufacturing, air safety and air transportation. Space exploration has also resulted in remarkable innovations that has played a key role in aeronautics research, preventative medicine, and allows scientists to study asteroids, along with other space debris and their impacts on Earth.

NASA is a key player in our technological growth. It leads in innovating technology development in both public and private industries across the board from aviation to zoology. In add-on, increasing the space program funding may increase our defense. As it will be exceedingly important that America innovates its space program for defense, from telecommunication to aviation. Likewise, what if an asteroid comes in our proximity and threatens our existence?, we ought to have something

The American space program as well as the United States economy is facing many challenges at this time but we need to look at what the long term costs of not continuing a robust manned and unmanned space program will be. The solar system holds many mysteries and an untold amount of untapped resources that if not explored and utilized by the United States will be utilized by other Nations. With finite resources on Earth any nation that is able to tap into new resources will be at a tremendous

Three main clusters that are developed under this idea of space exploration is the benefits that are gained, ethical code and what it means with regard to the future of the human race. In this paper I will talk about what major projects are being worked on and who will benefit from these. This will also include what laws of space are and ethical code. This will also identify the differing viewpoints on space exploration and whether the big picture is worth the small steps being taken as to advancements in space technology and sciences.

Rand Simberg’s article, “Homesteading the Final Frontier: A Practical Proposal for Securing Property Rights in Space,” addresses the lack in current legislation involving ownership of celestial property. Furthermore, Simberg goes over the loopholes in current legislation such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Treaty as well as solutions in support of space property rights. Simberg provides reasons on why homesteading lunar and other celestial properties such as asteroids could be beneficial to the planet not only scientifically, but also economically. The concepts Simberg describes in his article are presented in an organized and well developed manner. Therefore, I believe that this article would definitely be useful in my research paper because it provides sufficient evidence on the benefits of commercializing space.

Imagine all of the understanding of deep space, living on Mars, origins predicting, and competition in the current world. Datas evidence shows there are more and more asteroids in the past years and if we do not know anything about this our world would not be prepared. NASA wants to fund learning so we can examine the asteroids and collect data also, the world wants to know more about space and what is out there. According to the Tunguska Meteor Impact “At that moment there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash… The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The Earth trembled”. From this huge impact meteor, we can learn from this big effect it had and we have learn a lot about it from our technology and

It is a known fact that the Earth’s resources aren’t sustainable, and are depleting at a record rate. It is estimated that 50 years from now, valuable metals and fuels will be completely exhausted due to our expanding expenditure (Cohen, 2007). Without these supplies, mankind’s technological

Would you like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to help prevent asteroids from smashing earth and creating miles of damage? People might say ¨well we can't fund NASA because we need to focus on the poor people and the jobless people¨. The article NASA’s 2013 Budget Puts Brakes On Planet Probes states that the government funds 647 billion for Defense, 530 billion for Medicare, 367 billion for Healthcare, 551 billion for Income Security, and 733 billion for other and finally only 17.7 billion for NASA. Comparing to all the other things that the government funds, NASA is very little. NASA needs to fund asteroid studies for our safety, for learning, and for more earning.

Asteroids are large or small chunks of rock and metal flying around space up to speeds of 80 000 km/h. These chunks were believed to have formed millions of years ago during the "big bang". These rocks didn’t form any planets and

Due to the large number of space exploration projects, a large belt of debris has formed that can be hazardous to other operational spacecraft. As engineers, we have an ethical responsibility to prevent pollution of Earth’s atmosphere. We have learned a hard lesson on the value of environment from right here on Earth. Trends show that the debris belt circling the Earth will only get bigger, and become more hazardous to spacecraft.

The mysterious vastness beyond Earth has allured many scientists to explore and contribute much of their effort to the understanding of space. Although humans have been looking up at space for thousands of years, the physical exploration of this frontier has been only going on for the past few decades. Our current understanding of space is unparalleled to any time before in our history, but we still only know a small fraction of what there is to learn. Governments around the world spend about $40 billion dollars a year (Rockefeller, 2010) hoping to undertake tasks such as “human exploration of the solar system” to discovering the origins of life itself (Tatarewicz, 2009, p. 531). Recently, the private sector has also shown interest in space exploration in order to engage in profitable activities such as harnessing minerals from asteroids. Although it is easy to debate about the benefits and negatives of space exploration in its entirety, it is simpler focus on one aspect of it - the direct effect it has to those down on Earth. Rather than trying to decide whether or not going to other planets is worth it, this paper will argue about the value of the terrestrial benefits of space exploration. It is an important topic to think about as programs such as space exploration change lives and help acquire knowledge. Despite the large costs associated with space exploration, the multitude of discoveries in the past few decades has greatly improved daily life on Earth, the jobs the

This article is useful to my research because of the analysis of the relationship between each step in space exploration and the possible benefits in the science field. Although this article is shorter than most of other resources, it clearly explains the whole processes of space exploration as a benign cycle, space resources produce economy, economy provides technologies, technologies creates opportunities to future exploration, future exploration leads to more discoveries and resources, and then back to increase in economy. It is a unique perspective of explaining the reason why we need to explore outer space and mining resources, each step produces considerable benefits.