David Grabowsky English 1102 Instructor: Malcolm Campbell Second DraftFinal Paper

The Necessity of Space Travel: Humanities Fast Approaching Doom

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The celestial doom of earth is inevitable. As the late Carl Sagan once said, "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. Impacts from space are not to be taken lightly. The cosmos is not a kind place nor are the bodies that dwell within it. Celestial bodies are constantly colliding, impacting, and crashing into one another on a regular basis. In fact, it is a miracle that earth has not been hit by one such celestial body. Oh wait! It has! And on more than one occasion! Campbell Brown states, Something the size of a boulder [a couple feet in diameter] hits about once a week." These impacts are not the only threat, both the explosive increase in population as well as the explosive increase in resource demand has left the human race in a rather rocky position. With all of these problems piling up what can be done to actually solve them? The solution, or rather the next question that needs to be posed is how can space travel solve the resource and population crisis as well as keep humanity safe from the threat of impacts.
Comment [CRD1]: very good writing, I like the emotion portrayed here in a research essay.

First, lets explain just how old the threat of impacts really from space really is. OneOne of the first, and largest, examples of something impacting the earth occurred during the actual formation of the planet and resulted in the creation of the moon. There are four main theories on the creation of the moon. The theory currently believed by most scientist is the collision theory. The article Earths Moon on burro.astr.edu states this about the collision that created the moon When the Earth was quite young, a Mars -sized planet crashed into it. The planet crashed with such speed that it was completely destroyed, and almost destroyed the Earth. The planet was coming in with such force that when it was destroyed, the molten iron in its core continued to travel through Earth, to eventually be included it its core. This explains why the Moon has very little iron. The crash, comically dubbed the "Big Splash," sent tons of rock and debris into orbit. These fragments eventually coalesced to form the Moon. The tidal and rotational forces in play also account for why the moon's day is exactly the same as it's "year." What would happen if an impact event occurred with an asteroid the size of the moon, or even smaller, say with an asteroid a little more than 10 kilometers in diameter. Dvices article What would really happen if a huge asteroid hit Earth had this to say, Around 10 kilometers, we're talking about extinction events. The asteroid (or comet) that did in the dinosaurs is thought to have been around 10 to 16 kilometers in diameter. At those scales, Earth would be on fire, long-term changes to the climate would ensue, and mass extinctions would be inevitable. The events above may seem insignificant since they happened such a long time ago but that is simply not true. While an impact as large as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs

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Comment [CRD2]: where exactly is your inquiry question?

has not occurred in the past three thousand year, impacts still HAVE occurred. February 15th 2013, the Chelybainsk meteor suddenly explodes over Russian skies skys. The article Earth at Higher Risk of Asteroid Impact on space.com had this to say ab out the Russian meteor, The meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15 was the first video-recorded 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 coffee-table-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 capable of causing that much damage imagine what a meteor the size of a car or a building is capable of doing. All of the above mentioned threat comes solely from the danger of an impact from space. The only thing really protecting us is the sheer size of space. Eventually this protection will prove to not be enough. The human race is threatened by more than just impacts from space. In facts, the human race actually has found a way to threaten its own existence, two ways to be precise. The first is the resource crisis, which is formed by a population demanding more resources from its environment than that environment has to offer. The second is the population crises, which is formed by the human race continuing to grow at astounding rates while being confined to a finite object and thus finite space. A more in depth look at both the resource crisis and population crisis is necisary to understand how they form a threat to the existence of the human race. The resource crisis. Impacts from space are not the only credible threat to humanities existence. Over population and the resource crisis are also both threats to humanities existence.
Comment [CRD4]: this paragraph takes a while to get into the relation to the topic. It could be a good method however, it seems missed placed as of right now. Maybe consider reworking the flow. Comment [CRD3]: This should be skies.

Simple logic can explain this crisis.e resource crisis. The earth is a finite object. The matter that is currently present on earth is the total amount of matter that will ever will be present on earth, excluding extraterrestrial impacts. As the human population increases so too does the demand for resources. Eventually the demand for resources will out weight the amount of resources available on earth. Professor Dasgupta, president of the Society for Applied Sociology India (SASI), stated this in his novel, Understanding the Global Environment, The subsistence for survival is finite and limited. Overpopulation created a problem with the food supply and the inability to sustain the current population. The blame was placed on population size for shortages in the means for subsistence. This will become an ever more apparent problem as the population size continues to grow and the demand for resrouces contniures to climb. Unless the human racewe figures out a way to make matter out of energy then the human race will find that it has a bigger problem to worry about than a rock falling from the sky. then the human race will find itself in quite a predicament. The population crisis has to do with the human races increasing population size and growth rate. The human race continues to grow at an extremely fast rate. With the earth being a finite object eventually the human population will take up most if not all of the habitable space on earth which will in turn lead to conflict. Trovato Frank, professor at the University of Alberta Edmonton, stated in The Granite Garden: Urban Nature that The force of ever-increasing populations will eventually lead to depletion of resources and environmental degradation. With the given situation of rapid population growth, human suffering will increase with food shortages and rising rates of poverty. This threat actually goes hand in hand with the resource crisis. The resource crisis, in this case, is actually being caused in part by the population crisis. As the human race continues to grow and grow it will also continue to expand over all habitable land.
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Not now, but eventually the earth will run out of space and it is better to be prepared for this eventuality than to be stuck coming up with solution as the threat unfolds. Now that all of the threats are on the table, what can be done to fix then. The solution is space travel. WithWith the above mentioned threat to humanities existence, it becomes an imperative that humanity develop space travel. If space travel were to be developed humanity would gain the ability to spread itself throughout the cosmos giving humanity. This would give humanity the breathing room that its increasing population desperately needs. Also, sSpace travel would also solve the resource crisis by allowing humanity to add the resources found on other planets and asteroids to its own resource pool.harvest the resources found inside the infinite reaches of space such as the metal rich asteroids and liquid filled comets. The 36th president of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, is quoted saying, Someday we will be able to bring an asteroid containing billions of dollars worth of critically needed metals close to Earth to provide a vast source of mineral wealth for our factories. While this may have seemed like a farfetched fantasy to many living during Johnsons presidency, recent research has shown how harvesting asteroids could be a very plausible idea.this could be a plausible idea. John Lewis in his noveljournal, Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth, gives detailed and science based explanations about the plausibility of asteroid/planet mining as well as planet colonization. Lewis had this to say about the value of mining asteroids, Only one other space resource seems as attractive as the volatiles in carbonaceous meteorites. That resource is native metals. Most classes of meteorites, most asteroids, and all classes of chondrites that are not carbonaceous contain large quantities of native metals. These metals could be infinitely valuable as they are used to develop a commercial fleet of space faring vessels. They metals could also be used to create the wide variety of human technology that is so dependent on
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conductive materials. Finally these metals could create the boom in resources that would be necessary to make the colonization of other planets possible. In his novel journal Lewis also makes note of how space travel could alleviate the population crisis. by colonizing mars. The colonization of other planets has always seemed like an idea that would take some revolutionary technology to make possible. That is simply not true. What the colonization of other planets really requires is time. The colonization process is a slow one that require untied effort, resources, and time. However if the human race is capable of coming together then the problem no longer becomes how can we make colonization possible, but how can we make it self-sustaining. Lewis summarizes this by stating, We may then face a much less demanding problem: to identify what can be done to assure that environmental conditions suitable for life can be maintained in a Martian base, and to sketch out the initial steps that can be made towards a self-sufficient Martian colony. However, nNot everyone agrees that space travel should be a priority investment for the human race. The primary argument against space travel is that for the money being invested into it there is virtually no return. The money that is being spent on space travel could be spent on other issues like curing cancer or feeding the hungry. Basically these people say that would should be fixing the issues on earth before we venture beyond earth. A supporter of this mind set is author, explorer, and campaigner Robin Hanbury. Rabin states in his argument against space exploration on E and T, The amount of money being spent on space research is in the billions and it has achieved extraordinarily little except for a bit of improved technology which would probably have come about anyway by other means. Whether or not global warming is real, and whether or not we are facing imminent catastrophe on this planet, we are certainly facing serious
Comment [CRD5]: Robin or Rabin?

issues here on Earth, and they are getting worse as we simply watch them. These include the disappearance of the rainforest, the pollution of the oceans, and increased desertification of an area about the size of England every year. Rabin Hanbury is not the only supporter of these ideals. After all, using resource to fix problems on earth before going off and creating problems in space sounds like the practical thing to do, and many people will argue that it is in fact the right thing to do. The only flaw with this thinking is that eventually there will not be enough resources on earth to solve the problem. With population on the rise and resources on the decline problems will only get worse before they get better. Even if we focus all our resources on problems like solving world hunger, this will still only be a stalling tactic as eventually the human population will outgrow the amount of crops that can be created. Rabin exemplifies a problem that car mechanics often face. When the customer comes in with their car that has a broken brake light they expect to only have to pay to see that brake light fixed. However the mechanic looks at the car and determines that he can fix the break light and replace the water heater in order to keep the car from breaking down two months from now and to keep the damage localized. The car owner however only wants to pay money for things he can immediately see are fixed. That is the problem with Rabins thinking, he only wants to fix the problems that he can immediately see, and not worry about the larger problems that, if left unaccounted for, will cause much more damage than the immediate problems.
Comment [CRD6]: be careful not to just quote drop. The quote presents a good argument, however there is not really an explanation behind it. Granted, it is rather self explanatory, just be sure not to completely ignore it.

To contrast the attitude of Rabin, a supporter of space travel is now presented. A large supporter of developing space travel is Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson. For the past few years Richard Branson has invested into creating the first commercial space craft. This space

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craft will ferry passengers into the space located directly around earth for the price of two hundred thousand dollars. This is an extremely large step towards the development of space travel, after all nothing booms like the commercial industry. In any case, Richard Branson has taken one of the first non-government related attempts to venturing into space which in turn will open new possibilities for the public in the future. The development of space travel is an imperative if the human race hopes to survive into the future. If space travel were to be developed then humanity could solve both its population and resource crisis by spreading through the cosmos thus gaining the living space and extra resources it will so desperately needs. Humanity will never truly be safe while it stays grounded on earth. The constant threat of an impact from space means that humanity can never experience true peace, as a race, while it remains solely on earth. After all, if an asteroid were to impact the earth tomorrow and wipe humanity off the face of the earth, then we would be no better than the dinosaurs. If humanity wants to survive into the future, the development of space travel must become a priority.
Comment [CRD8]: what exactly are you trying to say in this sentence? Comment [CRD7]: check grammar

I really enjoy the points you made in this paper. I feel as though there is a lot of information in here as well as out there, in space. I feel like, while it definitely gives a good flowing feel in the writers head, Im not sure it is entirely conveyed throughout the paper. I can see where all your points are connected but I feel like it could be a little more concrete in the paper, defining the actual inquiry question in order to give all of the points a link back to a central topic. Obviously the central point is the need for space exploration and travel, but I feel like the paper could use better transitions between subtopics and linking them back to the central idea. Maybe a better introduction would help? Just some things to think about

Craig Davenport

Work Cited Choi, Charles. "Earth at Higher Risk of Asteroid Impact, Russian Meteor Explosion Reveals." Space.com. N.p., 06 Nov 2013. Web. 26 March 2014.Dasgupta, National Aeronautics and Space Administration International Space Hall of Fame :: New Mexico Museum of Space History: Inductee Profile." International Space

Hall of Fame: New Mexico Museum of Space. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. "For and Against: Space Exploration ." Engineering and Technology . The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Web. 26 March 2014. Journey Through the Galaxy. N.p., 13 Sept. 2006. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. Lewis, John S., and Ruth A. Lewis. Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print. Samir. Understanding the Global Environment. New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2009. Print. Trovato Frank, Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, New York: Basic Books, 1984, Print. "What would really happen if a huge asteroid hit Earth?." DVICE. 05 04 2013. Web. 26 March 2014.

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Dasgupta, Samir. Understanding the Global Environment. New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2009. Print. Lewis, John S., and Ruth A. Lewis. Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print. Trovato Frank, Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (New York: Basic Books, 1984).