I don’t remember when it was that I first began to gain an interest in space, but I was always amazed by the fact that there are millions of planets out there just like ours. In elementary I would always read books about the solar system and always thought about how those imagined how those planets would look like if I were to go there I often think about whether or not there is life outside of Earth. I believe there is, the universe is enormous and thinking that we’re the only ones is a bit depressing in my opinion. There are is infinite number of different possibilities of to what life may be like out there. When I think about this I constantly tend to imagine how a different world would look. Its hard for me to put in words how much the this blows my mind because its such a hard concept to grasp. But the way I look at it is that there is so much for us to learn out there, stuff that we can’t experience here on Earth. For example, a geologist might spend his or her whole life studying Earth because that’s what their passion is. But imagine how they would react when looking at another planet’s geological structure completely different than Earth’s, I can only assume that they would be left in awe when exposed to something like this. But if life does actually exists in some other part of the cosmos, it makes things even more complicated. There could be a place out there where there is no war, where everyone works together just for the sake of surviving. A place with completely different cultures than ours, different values and ethics. The list can go on forever.

    I can’t find a way to explain how thrilling space exploration is for me. To some people it might be scary, thinking of the unknown and all of the other mysteries out there. But I guess that’s what I find interesting, it makes you realize how unique we truly are. In scifi movies, for example in Avatar, you see someone’s picture of what a different world might look like. Some people think that this would never happen, that we would never visit other celestial bodies. But this may in fact become a reality one day.

Its amazing to see the great technological advancements we have done over the past one hundred years. To think about how we went from the first powered airplane flight to landing on the moon in the span of just 66 years is incredible. It makes me wonder how far we would be if we had the same mentality as we did during the space race. Even though there was heavy rivalry between both sides, they managed to accomplish so much. During that race we demonstrated what we are capable of achieving what seemed to be only science fiction during those times.

Although there were tensions between the U.S and the Soviet Union to see who had the superior spaceflight technology, it seems to me that they just wanted to show the world who was the superior figure. Even though they were racing for power, they both had a great success when it came to the things they did. The Soviets managed to be the first to send an artificial satellite to space and a man into orbit, but the U.S won the race by being the first to send humans to the moon. Now, there are many countries working together but recently we haven’t seen a lot of funding for these type of projects, which is very sad. Seeing the outcomes of the space race I believe that we can do the unimaginable. The space race was where it all began, it was the first big push for space exploration.