In my previous posts I have talked about why humans need to go to outer space. We need to go because of many things, there is not simply one reason. People spend so much money on space because they want something. Some of these people are Richard Branson and Elon Musk. They spend huge amounts of their personal money on the space initiative. Why are they so ambitious with their money? Perhaps it is because of curiosity, which is ironically the name of a space shuttle. I think that curiosity is the sole reason why we want to go to space. At the heart of curiosity is whether or not aliens exist.
Although space is very intriguing, we must consider the opposition. An article (2012) considers why alien life is very improbable. The first point is that no alien life has been found so far. This is true, we have sent out signals, and received nothing. Space seems to be quiet, or so at least temporarily. Another great point that the article makes is that there are so few planets that can support life. Planets have to be in a perfect orbit for life to be possible, reducing the numbers of potential planets even more (Murray).
To counter the first article I found another which argues that we will find aliens eventually (2012). In this article Drake, who created the Drake equation for construing the number of lifeforms in our solar system, says his life’s work. Drake has been sending signals into outer space, but has received nothing. He argues that we simply need time, but eventually we will receive a signal back (Drake). I believe that this is true, after all signals travel at the speed of light. It would take 100,000 years at the speed of light to get across the Milky Way.
It takes money to do most things, and space travel is not any different. We need people like Richard Branson, and Elon Musk to fund sending microwaves into space. Their curiosity is what is allowing all of this to happen, but not for long. Eventually we will need more people to help create bigger and better microwave emitters. Maybe we won’t find aliens in our lifetime, but sending out signals now will eventually merit a response. If we have a big curiosity, then perhaps the aliens have a curiosity also. Who knows, they could be debating about responding to our signals right now.
I believe that we should push on with exploring. Drake’s article was very interesting to me because it showed optimism. We can’t rule out other life forms because we simply do not know. It would be very ignorant if I was so say that there is no asteroid headed to earth because we have not seen it yet. Through Drakes equation it is practically an impossibility for there not to be alien worlds. I believe that Aliens exist, which is why I think that we need to explore space.
Murray, I. (2012). Humans Are Unlikely Ever to Encounter Alien Life. In D. Haugen & Z. Lewis (Eds.), At Issue. Space Exploration. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from American Enterprise, 2004, December, 15[8], 36-37) Retrieved from http://0-ic.galegroup.com.opac.sfsu.edu/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&dviSelectedPage=&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=&displayGroups=&sortBy=&zid=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010356228&source=Bookmark&u=sfsu_main&jsid=56beae0dd33bd16a5dce96786397ff83
Drake, F. (2012). Humans Eventually Will Encounter Alien Life. In D. Haugen & Z. Lewis (Eds.), At Issue. Space Exploration. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from Only a Matter of Time, Says Frank Drake, cosmosmagazine.com, 2010) Retrieved from http://0-ic.galegroup.com.opac.sfsu.edu/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&dviSelectedPage=&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=&displayGroups=&sortBy=&zid=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010356227&source=Bookmark&u=sfsu_main&jsid=e412eaee252495d18a96e3c1a952181c
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