Zack Ramsey

Eng-112-401 Argumentative Essay

April 12, 2020

An analysis on why Nasa has had a positive impact on society.

Throughout NASA's nearly 60-year history they have had ups and downs but overall,

they have been a positive influence on society and here's why. They have sent the first people

into outer space and allowed them to develop a greater understanding of the deeper cosmos that

humans would not be able to have just staying on earth. They have had several disasters but most

notably there was the Challenger and Columbia disasters which yes were disastrous they are very

uncommon occurrences. Nasa’s space exploration and discoveries is a greater impact than the

few rare disasters they’ve had.

In 1990 Nasa launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the HST, to explore and to gather

photographic evidence of the outer reaches of our galaxy. This telescope has allowed humanity

to learn more about many things including distances in space, the life and death of stars, and

black holes among other things. Blackholes are one of the strongest objects in our galaxy but we

know very little about them because they are too dangerous for a human being to study close up

safely well that is where the HST comes in. It has allowed humanity to measure the shapes and

sizes of black holes. The HST has allowed them to conclude that “that at least some of these

clusters are disk-like" (Dalcanton) These discoveries made Nasa conclude that black holes could

be linked to massive structures in the center of galaxies.

People have questioned for centuries if life was ever possible on mars and Nasa being the

largest association dealing with space felt that it was their responsibility to try to answer this. In
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August of 2016, Nasa launched a rover to study the surface of Mars. This rover is equipped with

instruments to study soil samples, the atmosphere, and even clean itself. This rover had errors

when landing. The rover's landing process was rocky because it was approaching the planet too

fast and the team responsible for the rover was scared of a crash landing on Mars. This could

have been an expensive disaster and waste of time but as the rover was landing the team called it

the “seven minutes of terror”(Matthews) which if they failed to do anything necessary the rover

could be lost. Luckily the rover landed successfully and was able to gather soil and atmosphere

samples and reading allowing Nasa to hypothesize about the probability of life. This shows how

Nasa has been able to work well under immense pressure.

It's many people's dream to go to space but most people aren't meant to be astronauts well

in the distant future space travel as a vacation could become a possibility. It wouldn’t necessarily

be available to the average working person just yet but this is a step into the future. They have

made a selection of three possible providers for the travel. These partners would have control

over the process “Each partner is providing end-to-end commercial payload delivery services to

NASA, including payload integration and operations, launch from Earth and landing on the

surface of the Moon” (SpaceDaily) while Nasa would provide the technology and ability

knowledge on the technology. In the past, the twenty-first century was pictured as being the

pinnacle of modernity with robots and flying cars but we aren't at that point technologically but

this is a step in that direction.

Now Nasa has had disasters such as the Columbia and Challenger explosions but those

are few and far between. The Challenger disaster was in 1986 when a shuttle exploded on

launch. This killed everyone on board which included a teacher who had won the chance to teach

from space. This could have been avoided yes but these mistakes do happen. After this Nasa
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became more strict about their safety procedures to hopefully prevent this from ever happening

again in the future. Since this did scare people at the time but it did show people the risks. The

teacher who died was named Christa McAuliffe and since her death “Schools and science centers

across the country are named for her. In New Hampshire, we have the McAuliffe-Shepard

Discovery Center, an air and space museum and planetarium, as well as the Christa McAuliffe

School, an elementary school in Concord. There have even been an asteroid and a crater on the

moon named after her.” (Shaheen) showing that her death was not in vain and that she is still

remembered. The Columbia disaster was seventeen years later in 2003. Upon re-entry into the

atmosphere, the shuttle had sustained damage and that damage made it too structurally weak to

withstand reentry destroying it killing everyone on board. “The theory that a piece of foam may

have damaged the wing was proposed. It was quickly dismissed too, as not being possible for the

foam to cause such a catastrophic failure.” (Guthrie, Shayo) that foam did end up being enough

to cause catastrophic failure. That theory was pushed away but once proven made Nasa realize

that even the smallest things can be detrimental to the safety of passengers onboard the shuttles

again stressing how important safety was and how strict they had to be from then on. These

disasters were detrimental to Nasa's image but it did show the world how they would handle

disasters and how they could improve and learn from them.

Nasa has been an insanely expensive cooperation ever since its inception. The previously

mentioned Hubble Space telescope was a two billion dollar project that costs hundreds of

millions to billions of dollars to repair. Missions to explore Jupiter are more than a billion dollars

and even failures launch cost around a billion dollars. “The Mars Orbiter, has been inexplicably

lost. Similarly, an Earth-mapping satellite, a continuation of the Landsat series, is now floating

uselessly in some unknown Earth orbit” (Gold) these immensely expensive satellites have been
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lost but they were still sent out and paid for but since they have been lost the money is doing

nothing. Well, Nasa may be an expensive company with a yearly budget of around twenty-two

billion dollars which is nowhere near the six-hundred eighty-six billion dollar budget of the

United States military. Nasa may not provide protection to just the United States they have

gathered information that can be used by all of humanity for years to come causing them to have

a greater long-lasting impact.

Nasa continues to have the International Space Station, ISS, which acts as a safe space

for people from around the world to do research in outer space. The ISS also gives people a place

to stay long term in space “Williams has been aboard the station since December 2006”

(Pellerin) to study the long term effects of space on the human body. This is a place that is used

by people from all around the world all for the same thing. This is a place where the Earthly

disagreements do not play a part allowing research to be free and unaltered.

Nasa has had successes and failures. They have had countless successes with the

occasional failure. These successes do outweigh the failures though. The cost of the corporation

can not be overlooked but this price has to be paid in order to advance humanity into the last

frontier. Nasa has been a successful company overall with a few blemishes on their record that

they accept, learn from, and remember.

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Works Cited

Dalcanton, Julianne J. "18 years of science with the Hubble Space Telescope." Nature, vol. 457,

no. 7225, 2009, p. 41+. Gale In Context: Science, https://link-gale-

com.proxy039.nclive.org/apps/doc/A192061371/SCIC?u=ncliveclcc&sid=SCIC&xid=7a

9d78ab. Accessed 23 Feb. 2020.

Guthrie, R., and C. Shayo. The Columbia Disaster: Culture, Communication & Change. IGI

Global, Hershey, 2005. ProQuest,

https://login.proxy039.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/192334

713?accountid=10163.

"Is NASA an Expensive Failure?" Nature, vol. 366, no. 6457, 1993, pp. 723. ProQuest,

https://login.proxy039.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/204440606?acc

ountid=10163

Matthews, Mark K. "Success! NASA Lands Rover on Mars and Begins Two Year Mission."

McClatchy - Tribune Business News, Aug 06, 2012. ProQuest,

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https://login.proxy039.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/103116

2854?accountid=10163.\

“NASA History.” Congressional Digest, vol. 90, no. 7, Sept. 2011, p. 196. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=65456631&site=ehost-live.

"NASA selects first commercial moon landing services for Artemis Program." Space Daily, 5

June 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link-gale-

com.proxy039.nclive.org/apps/doc/A587759037/ITOF?u=shel41774&sid=ITOF&xid=9b0c

154e. Accessed 23 Feb. 2020.

Pellerin, Cheryl. Next International Space Station Crew to Launch April 7: NASA and

International Partners Set for Busy Year Ahead in Space. Federal Information & News

Dispatch, Inc, Washington, 2007. ProQuest,

https://login.proxy039.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/189980220

?accountid=10163.

Shaheen Statement on Anniversary of Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Federal Information &

News Dispatch, Inc, Washington, 2020. ProQuest,

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https://login.proxy039.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/234735

3895?accountid=10163.