Lab #8: The Great Space Debate
Private companies like SpaceX are making great progress in humanity’s ability to access space for exploration or even recreation, with billions of dollars being invested annually on research and development of new technologies. For many space enthusiasts, colonizing Mars is the next big step for humanity. However, many ask why would we spend so much money making a new planet habitable when we already have Earth? What would it look like if we focused this investment on the challenges facing Earth? Join our panel of scientists as we debate the need to explore space against the need to protect our home, planet Earth.
Lab: “The Great Space Debate”
Link to Q & A with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly_Dec. 2023
Twenty years of the International Space Station – but was it worth it?
Mini-debate 1: The Space Race and the Apollo missions
The “golden age” of space travel was driven by rivalry between the former Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. The first mini-debate questioned whether the Space Race in the 1960s — including the Apollo missions, which put the first man on the moon — proved that humans belong in space.
Mini-debate 2: The golden era of robotic exploration
Robotic exploration of the solar system started in the 1960s with the former Soviet Union’s Venera and Zond missions and the American Mariner missions. By 2015, when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, automated explorers had successfully visited every planet in the solar system. Does the success of robots mark the end of human exploration in space?
Mini-debate 3: Commercial space travel
Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have ambitious plans for commercial space travel and colonization of the planets. Sir Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic hopes to be launching suborbital space tourism flights in the next year. The third mini-debate focused on the near-future of space exploration, which may be driven by big private-sector players like Musk and Branson.
Mini-debate 4: The moral implications of humanity in space
The last part of the discussion explored the proposition that practically and morally, the future of humanity is in space.
Renée Hložek said that regardless of who is tasked with space exploration, we need to remember to address the serious issues on our home planet first.
