Austyn Richards
ENC 1101
Prof. Harris
April, 8, 2014
Dunbar, Brian. "What's Next For NASA?" www.nasa.gov NASA,Sept. 4, 2013. Web. 8 April. 2014
The end of NASA's spaceflight program has been viewed as a step down from being the world's forerunner on outer space exploration and research, but on the contrary it's the wisest position NASA could take to further our exploration capabilities. In the article "What's Next For NASA?" author Brian Dunbar explains how NASA is simply changing it's focus from shuttle missions and the International Space Station which are both essentially dead horses at this point, and focusing on more advanced and fruitful creations such as a new type of shuttle capable of taking astronauts to mars, more efficient and safer aircraft to secure our superiority in the aerospace field and even meteorological aspects to better help us understand and perhaps predict natural catastrophes like hurricanes or tsunamis. Though NASA will not be launching shuttles any time soon, this is not the end of our presences in orbit; in an effort to conserve our resources to put to use on these new technologies our astronauts will be working in conjunction with Russian cosmonauts aboard their Soyuz rockets in order to commute to and from the International Space Station.
Durda, Daniel D. "The End of an Era." Mercury 40 (2011): 10-10 Academic Search complete Web. 16 April 2014.
Daniel Durda's "The End of an Era." Explains NASA’s manned space flights contributions to what we know about what exactly is beyond our atmosphere much like my other source by Brian Dunbar but Durda’s article goes more in depth on specific shuttle launches and their purpose. I can use the specificity of this article to better illustrate the details of the space program that I chose to write about. Durda also goes on to explain the advances in our knowledge of our own planet that NASA has contributed to like the shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which was carried to the upper levels of our atmosphere by Endeavour in 2000; this mission produced the most high resolution map of our own planet ever made. I chose this article solely on the detail of specific shuttle launches, this article seems to have a tone more angled toward keeping the manned space flight program running, which isn’t exactly conducive to my report about the opposing viewpoint of ending the program; but facts are undisputable and I need as many as I can find to convey to the reader just how unnecessary humans are in the grand scheme of space exploration.
Pogue, David “End of an Era for Shuttle, and NASA” Video. Cbsnews.com. CBS Interactive inc., 29 May 2011. Web. 16 April 2014.
This video was incredibly informative as well as helpful to my position on the end of NASA’s manned space flight program, it explains everything from the intricacies of each shuttle to the long term goals of NASA’s future missions, narrator David Pogue says at one point “The shuttle isn't some mass-produced SUV. Each one is basically hand-built from hundreds of complex, custom-made parts. That's one reason the shuttle is so finicky. The Shuttle's complexity was also responsible for its two far more traumatic failures: the Challenger disaster in 1986, and the disintegration of the Columbia in 2003 - terrible accidents that killed everyone on board.” This one statement really exemplifies the risk and cost of manned space missions, Pogue explains that due to the extreme conditions of outer space a lot of preparation and precaution must be taken to ensure the safety of our astronauts, whereas if there were only automated machines aboard our shuttle they would be