http://www.humansinspace.org

ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE: Because of scarcity, people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost.

THESIS : We as a human race would probably want to explore as much as we can of  our universe, but there is a border  in resources that limit us.

SYNTHESIS PARAGRAPH: The resources that we posses on our planet, can make our fate in further discovering the universe. We will might be in a situation to choose between, doing something useful for our planet, or try to find and provide environment for living on some other planet. All those amazing discoveries that we have made, gave us some information. One of them has recently discovered that, there is water on the moon. This proves that, if we didn’t invest our money in this mission, we would never find out there is water on the moon. Is it really worth? Why we would spend so much money on some researching far away from us when, probably most of us won’t even be able to visit that place. Wouldn’t  be better if, we would use that money for helping poor people that are almost everywhere around us? But, we are coming to that economic principle called “scarcity”. We all know that our planet won’t last forever, so humans are trying to develop powerful spacecraft that would be able to drop us somewhere far away where we can survive. What would happen if we gave all that money to the poors? We would save a couple million lives, but in case that our planet explodes, 7 billion people would lose their lives.

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Back in 1973, the total cost of Apollo 11 mission was $25.4 billion. The most expensive parts of this mission, were Apollo spacecrafts. A single Saturn V launch can cost up to almost $400 million, which was really big amount of money in that time. An amazing fact with the rockets, was that, during the takeoff each one of the burnt 3 tons of fuel per second. In 2009, NASA tried to figure out once again what was the amount of cost for the project that occurred almost a half century ago. They came up with the number of $200 billion in today’s money. Compared to today’s cost of modern space travel, where some companies charge $130 million to launch a spacecraft to the international space station. From this example we can really get a better picture of how important that mission was for humanity. Nowadays, people are starting to ask themselves, whether it was worth or not. In 1966, NASA’s budget was at its peak, and it was 4.4% of the federal budget. Between 1975 and 2000, the budget was around 1%. Since the mid 90s it has slowly declined to 0.5%. This was one of the most important research project in the history of humanity. After that, every further action was much easier. Now we are using it as much as we can to gather the information which one day can help us to move out our population from the earth that we know.

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The moon is our closest cosmic neighbor. And we’ve been exploring it surface since we developed the first telescope. The first tries of exploring the moon were not very productive. In that time, we were still unable to find out everything we wanted, but only about decade later, we had a human being walking on the moon. Luna 2 was the first object that landed on the moon’s surface in 1959. There were a few missions by NASA. They wanted to get as many pictures as possible from the flying object before it just smashes at the moon. These spacecrafts were named “Ranger”. Ranger 7 had really successful mission, because it collected more than 4,000 photos before it crashed. Around 1966-67 Russia had two successful missions. Luna 9 was the first vehicle that landed softly on the surface. Luna 10 which was launched about one year later, was the first object that orbited the moon. Probably one of the most important events that occurred on the moon was Apollo 11 mission. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, were making historical move. They were the first human beings who landed on the moon’s surface. In 1999 the lunar prospector orbited the moon in searching for ice at the lunar poles. It also explored the moon’s gravitational field. This mission was ended with smashing the craft into the moon on purpose. With smashing the craft, they wanted to find out if there was water on the moon. Nowadays, many countries are involved in researching the moon’s surface and the moon’s environment. This can actually bring a lot of goods for us, because one day we will maybe be able to use the moon as the first station in further research of the universe. The U.S. has probably one of the most ambitious plans, because they are planning to return the humans to the moon by the end of 2020.

NEXT RESEARCH QUESTION: How much did the apollo 11 mission cost?

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Throughout the history, we, human beings have done many amazing things. I believe that every person would agree that those space discoveries were one of the most important and unbelievable for the humanity. There are too many of them but i will try to pick 5 of them, that are really interesting to write about.

Until 2005 a large number of scientists agree that, there are 9 planets in our solar system. With the discovery of a new planet called Eris, which was bigger than Pluto for 27 percent, everything has changed. Both planets, Pluto and Eris were now classified as dwarf planets. This caused losing of one planet in solar system. Since 2005, we’ve been having 8 planets.

There is another type of planet that we don’t know pretty much about them. These planets are called Exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets that orbit in a different solar system than where we are now.Earlier in 2015 scientists discovered the exoplanet called Kepler-452b. Because of its similarities with the earth, scientists called this planet Earth’s cousin.

Since humans have been discovering our solar system and all space bodies, the ones that are most unknown to us are black holes. The reason why we are not so familiar with them is because, it was really hard for scientists to develop further researching on them without. After launching super strong Hubble telescope into space, which was designed to send clearest pictures back to the earth, scientists were finally able to give us more information about black holes. Black holes are believed to be dying stars that collapse inward from their own weight. Their gravity force is so strong that even light can’t escape. That’s why they are black.

Since Mars is one of the closest space body around us, we have spent a lot of time doing researches on it. The one that was most important for us was exploring Mars for the first time when we got pictures in color of Mars. It was also an experiment to go and check if the life would be possible on Mars. Later, we continued with researching this planet and another amazing discovery has happened. Scientists claim that they discovered there is liquid water on that planet. This proves that life could exist somewhere far away from us.

The last one that happened recently was, the first landing on a comet in 2014. This one was important because it finally allowed scientists to study the material that make up a comet for the first time. I think that it would be really an amazing thing if one day we would find some other living species far away from our home. It would be unbelievable to share our history with some species that we didn’t even know exists.

FUTURE RESEARCH QUESTION: The moon..

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Humans are an amazing species. Since we know for ourselves, we’ve always been interested in researching that endless universe. A lot of different scientists from all around the world were giving us their theories, how the universe was created. Some said that the universe was created from nothing, some said that the universe was created in that a big bang explosion.  According to National Geographic, most used theory is actually that( A big bang theory). Scientists who stand behind this theory claimed, or claiming that, 10 or 20 billion years ago, massive explosion allowed the universe’s known matter and energy. None of the scientists can be exactly sure what was going on with the universe after a big bang, not even the greatest ones. And it is really hard to give some true explanation, because there is no any technology invented yet that can prove anybody’s thought. Even though this theory was accepted the most, there are still some unanswered questions about the theory. There is the one that is in every scientist's mind, what was the cause of a big bang itself ?           

The universe is one really strange phenomena. We all know it’s there, but we still can’t do pretty much about discovering those long distances of an endless world. Though the history, Humans have done some amazing things. We’ve discovered our solar system, we’ve found a lot planets in our surroundings,we’ve found out about the structure of the planets, of the sun. Even though we’ve done all these amazing things, we still have to do much more to do. I believe that it’s going to be important for the human species to research the universe as much as possible because, one day it can save our lives.  I think that this source is reliable because, this is one the most famous magazines that deals with this kind of research. It’s published by National Geographic.

FUTURE RESEARCH QUESTION: In my next blog post i will do a research on most important discoveries that happened.

How much do we know about the moon? What's the cost of exploring the moon?

• KEY ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES I’M ADDRESSING: Because of scarcity, people choose, All choices have an opportunity cost
• OVERALL RESEARCH QUESTION: How much the government should spend on exploring the universe
• SUB QUESTIONS
• How can we know that, the earth revolves around the sun? Is the sun, center of our solar system?  
• How our planet moves through space?
• What kind of planet is the earth?
•  Moon explorations?
• Missions on the moon?
• RESOURCES FOR RESEARCH:
• DATABASES:
• WEBSITES: "http://natgeo.galegroup.com/natgeo/archive?p=NGMA&u=hins30136" and "http://worldgeography.abc-clio.com/Authentication/PickCustomer?returnAction=%2f&webSiteCode=SLN_WGEO&returnToPage=%2fAuthentication%2fPickCustomer%3freturnAction%3d%252f&token=BE42C0CD
  

  

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