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"Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity. At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying." (Business Insider).

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Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity.

At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age - Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson - are saying.

Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each, could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now.

"If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary.

That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars:

1. Ensuring the survival of our species

The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed.

The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

"Humans need to be a multiplanet species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait.

Humans need to be a multiplanet species. - Elon Musk

Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen.

Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

2. Discovering life on Mars

Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today. Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there.

One monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA's rovers can. The theory there is that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on Mars.

The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth. None of those, however, have shown signs of life.

"You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey, a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth

"Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth."

British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars.

At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example:

During its first three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images.

It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye.

"You can't script that. That happens all the time - this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

It's impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before.

4. Growing as a species

Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars, he answered:

"Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians," he said. "The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now."

Humanity's aspirations to explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another.

"Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does."

5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership

At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy.

"In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," he said.

If Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds.

"If you lose your space edge," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, "my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically."

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5 undeniable reasons humans need to colonize Mars - even though it's going to cost billions

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Aside from ensuring the survival of the human species.

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Becoming a mutiplanet species is the next step in evolution as a human race. Establishing a colony on Mars may be an extremely challenging task but it's our only hope in ensuring a future. Humans are destroying Earth and its effects are seen through Global Warming, Pollution, Politics and anything of the sorts.  Evolution has been taking place since the dawn of time, that why in many ways human are how they are today, but to further the human race we must travel beyond this planet.

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Why Invest In Making Life Multi-Planetary? Elon Musk

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I thought Packing for Mars was one of the wackiest books I have read.. it's composed of very intellectual ideas and thoughts relating to space travel and Mars. While many of the ideas in the book are written in such abstract ways, Roach's style of writing is something I have never seen before. The entire book is beyond imaginable that its captivating throughout. I would suggest this book for anyone interested in Space.

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From experience you get knowledge. Roach describes how intuition is built on experiences. You can imagine the countless other experiences and opportunities there are waiting for humans on Mars and in space travel. Every new experience is an opportunity to learn and add to intuition:

“Human beings have this amazing tool called intention, where they’ve built up a catalogue of experiences and they can draw on it instancelosuy and spend one minute looking at a scene-whether it’s on Mars or at a crime scene-and know what happened here,” (Roach page 171).

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Mars is an opportunity to learn and inspire innovation for future generations, "Space exploration is widely recognized to be one of the most effective ways to inspire students to become interested in STEM education and it is a well-known driver of technology and innovation," -(Fox News, "Six essential reasons why we need to send humans to Mars").

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“Humans need to be a multiplanet species.” — Elon Musk

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I do believe it's worth it to go to mars. Humans are born destined to explore, it’s in our blood. 

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I do believe it's worth it to go to mars. Humans are born destined to explore, it’s in our blood. 

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“People can’t anticipate how much they’ll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it.” (Roach, page 57). Humans have become so comfortable in the world we live in, it's time to get uncomfortable and explore as we did before millions of years ago.

Exploring is part of living and what’s living without a future. It’s believable that if one small planet in this vast universe has life there bound to be others. Even if there aren’t others it's our duty to protect the human species that mother nature created. I would pack for Mars, to go places no one has been before, and to have a chance to fix the mistakes that humans have created here on earth in order to ensure the success of the human race.

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Humanity's interest in the heavens has been universal and enduring. Humans are driven to explore the unknown, discover new worlds, push the boundaries of our scientific and technical limits, and then push further. The intangible desire to explore and challenge the boundaries of what we know and where we have been has provided benefits to our society for centuries.
Human space exploration helps to address fundamental questions about our place in the Universe and the history of our solar system. Through addressing the challenges related to human space exploration we expand technology, create new industries, and help to foster a peaceful connection with other nations. Curiosity and exploration are vital to the human spirit and accepting the challenge of going deeper into space will invite the citizens of the world today and the generations of tomorrow to join NASA on this exciting journey.

A Flexible Path

This is the beginning of a new era in space exploration in which NASA has been challenged to develop systems and capabilities required to explore beyond low-Earth orbit, including destinations such as translunar space, near-Earth asteroids and eventually Mars.
NASA will use the International Space Station as a test-bed and stepping stone for the challenging journey ahead. By building upon what we learn there we will prepare astronauts for the challenges of long-duration flight and the permanent expansion of human exploration beyond where we have been before. Explorers may visit near-Earth asteroids where we may get answers to the questions humans have always asked. Visiting an asteroid will provide valuable mission experience and prepare us for the next steps-possibly for the first humans to step on Mars.
Robotic exploration continues to deliver profound answers about our Universe by visiting far-off destinations, providing reconnaissance and collecting scientific data. When combining both human and robotic exploration methods we will use technology and our senses to increase our ability to observe, adapt, and uncover new knowledge.

Why the International Space Station?

The first step in embarking on a long and challenging journey involves laying solid groundwork for a successful endeavor. The International Space Station serves as a national laboratory for human health, biological, and materials research, as a technology test-bed, and as a stepping stone for going further into the solar system. On the International Space Station we will improve and learn new ways to ensure astronauts are safe, healthy and productive while exploring, and we will continue expand our knowledge about how materials and biological systems behave outside of the influence of gravity.
NASA will continue its unprecedented work with the commercial industry and expand an entire industry as private companies develop and operate safe, reliable and affordable commercial systems to transport crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station and low Earth orbit.

Why Translunar Space?

Translunar space is vast expanse surrounding the Earth-moon system, extending far beyond the moon's orbit and dominated by the two bodies' gravity fields. Exploring in translunar space, beyond the protection of the Earth's geomagnetic field, will provide unprecedented experience in deep-space operations. Operating in translunar space, NASA can research galactic cosmic radiation-potentially the most threatening element to humans exploring deep space-and develop mitigation strategies that may also lead to medical advancements on Earth.
The Lagrange points-places in cislunar space where the gravitational influences of the Earth and moon cancel each other out-are advantageous areas for exploration and research in which almost no propulsion is required to keep an object or spacecraft stationary. The Lagrange point on the far side of the Earth-Moon system, called L2, also provides a "radio silence" zone for astronomical observations.
Missions to translunar space will give NASA and its partners the opportunity to develop tools and operational techniques to support decades of future exploration, while remaining in relative proximity to Earth.

Why Asteroids?

Asteroids are believed to have formed early in our solar system's history-about 4.5 billion years ago-when a cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula collapsed and formed our sun and the planets. By visiting these near Earth objects to study the material that came from the solar nebula, we can look for answers to some of humankind's most compelling questions, such as: how did the solar system form and where did the Earth's water and other organic materials such as carbon come from?
In addition to unlocking clues about our solar system, asteroids may provide clues about our Earth. By understanding more about asteroids we may learn more about past Earth impacts and possibly find ways to reduce the threat of future impacts.
Future robotic missions to asteroids will prepare humans for long-duration space travel and the eventual journey to Mars. Robotic missions will provide reconnaissance information about asteroid orbits, surface composition, and even return samples to Earth for further evaluation. These robotic missions are a critical step in preparing humans to visit asteroids where we will learn about the valuable resources available in space, and further develop ways to use them in our quest for more efficient and affordable exploration.

Why Mars?

Mars has always been a source of inspiration for explorers and scientists. Robotic missions have found evidence of water, but if life exists beyond Earth still remains a mystery. Robotic and scientific robotic missions have shown that Mars has characteristics and a history similar to Earth's, but we know that there are striking differences that we have yet to begin to understand. Humans can build upon this knowledge and look for signs of life and investigate Mars' geological evolution, resulting in research and methods that could be applied here on Earth.
A mission to our nearest planetary neighbor provides the best opportunity to demonstrate that humans can live for extended, even permanent, stays beyond low Earth orbit. The technology and space systems required to transport and sustain explorers will drive innovation and encourage creative ways to address challenges. As previous space endeavors have demonstrated, the resulting ingenuity and technologies will have long lasting benefits and applications.
The challenge of traveling to Mars and learning how to live there will encourage nations around the world to work together to achieve such an ambitious undertaking. The International Space station has shown that opportunities for collaboration will highlight our common interests and provide a global sense of community.

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Humanity's interest in the heavens has been universal and enduring. Humans are driven to explore the unknown, discover new worlds, push the boundaries of our scientific and technical limits, and then push further. The intangible desire to explore and challenge the boundaries of what we know and where we have been has provided benefits to our society for centuries.

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It's our duty as humans to ensure a future for generations to come

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It's our duty as humans to ensure a future for generations to come

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The dinosaurs once roamed this earth until a colossal asteroid wiped them out, the same may happen to humans one day. We are the future of space travel, Roach explains we are what makes Space travel so amazing and mysterious. To defy everything man has learned and to adapt to a whole new environment is something incredible, and that's what makes space travel worth it:

“To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing. To take an organism whose every feature has evolved to keep it alive and thriving in a world with oxygen, gravity, and water, to suspend that organism in the wasteland of space for a month or a year, is a preposterous but captivating undertaking.” (Roach page 15)

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Billions of years ago Mars was just like Earth, "We already know that early in its history, more than three billion years ago, Mars had a surface environment much like that of Earth at the same time, featuring volcanoes, lakes, hot springs, and perhaps even an ocean in the northern hemisphere," (Phys.org). Mars is so similar to Earth, at least it once was, that scientists believe it can be again.

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A view from the 'Kimberley' formation on Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

If we want to know whether there is life beyond Earth then the quickest way to answer that question is to explore Mars. That exploration is currently being done by remote space probes sent from Earth.

The race is on though to send human explorers to Mars and a number of Earth-bound projects are trying to learn what life would be like on the red planet.

But the notion of any one-way human mission to Mars is nonsensical, as is the thought that we should colonise Mars simply because we are making a mess of Earth.

The first suggestion is pointless and unethical - we would be sending astronauts to their certain death - while the second would be a licence for us to continue polluting our home planet.

I believe we should go to Mars because of what we can learn from the red planet, and from developing the technologies to get people there safely.

The SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk last September outlined his vision for a mission to send people to Mars by 2022. But first he is planning to send people around the Moon.

Fly me to the moon ... Ok https://t.co/6QT8m5SHwn
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2017

I think Musk will send two space tourists around the Moon and back to Earth, not in 2018 as he has predicted, but probably within a decade. He has not yet experimented with having passengers aboard a rocket.

The red planet Mars. Credit: NASA

Our journey into space
It's worth looking at how we got to where we are now in terms of humans in space and space exploration.

The first footprint on another world was made by US astronaut Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969 (US time) when he left the Eagle lunar lander and stepped onto the Moon.

The Moon is as far as humans have explored in space but we've sent probes to explore the other planets in our Solar system, including Mars.

Several failed attempts were made to send a probe to Mars but the US Mariner 4 was the first to successfully photograph another planet from space when it made a flyby of Mars in July 1965.

The USSR's Mars 2 orbited Mars for three months in 1971 but its lander module crashed onto the planet. The lander of the Mars 3 mission also failed.

NASA's Viking 1 performed the first successful landing on Mars, on July 20, 1976, followed by Viking 2 on September 3, 1976.

The Viking missions were the first to search for life on that planet, since when others such as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed days apart in January 2004, have looked to see if Mars could have had life in the past.

No evidence of life has been found so far, but the techniques available now are far more advanced and we know much more about the planet. We do have abundant evidence of water on Mars.

The dunes of Mars as seen by Viking 1. Credit: NASA/JPL

The benefits of space exploration
Apart from looking for life, why bother with a mission to send humans to Mars? Many aspects of our modern lives would not be possible if it were not for our interest in space.

We rely on satellites for communication, timing and positioning. Satellites help to keep us safe from severe weather, especially in Australia.

The Apollo and other NASA missions led to developments in micro-electronincs that later made it into household devices such as calculators and home computers.

NASA has detailed many of the spinoffs it says stem from its research for exploration of space, which even include the dustbuster.

Intangible, but critical nonetheless, is the inspiration we derive from space exploration. It can be very significant in attracting young people to science and engineering, something needed more and more as our economies continue to transition to an ever higher-tech future.

In the US there was a large spike in tertiary enrolments in science and engineering during the Apollo missions to the Moon.
A new space race
We are using more and more sophisticated craft to explore Mars. It is a broadly international venture involving NASA, the European Space Agency (22 member nations), the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the China National Space Administration, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

This animation shows how the surface of Mars might have appeared billions of years ago.

We are witnessing not only collaboration but competition. Which nation (or company?) will first return to the Moon and then land astronauts on Mars? It is beginning to look like a new space race.

Why focus on Mars? We already know that early in its history, more than three billion years ago, Mars had a surface environment much like that of Earth at the same time, featuring volcanoes, lakes, hot springs, and perhaps even an ocean in the northern hemisphere.

Life on Earth then was microbial, the evidence for which is preserved in 3.5 billion year old rocks in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

So we are searching for microbes on Mars. Despite being microscopic, bacteria and their cousins the Archaea are complex organisms. Methane already discovered in the atmosphere of Mars hints at the presence of such life but is not definitive.

If there ever was life on Mars it may still be there, underground where it will be protected from cosmic and ultraviolet radiation. From time to time it might emerge on the surface in some of the gullies that seem to result from the breaching of underground aquifers.

It might not seem exciting to discover former or living microbes, but if we can demonstrate that they represent an independent origin of life the consequences will be profound.

We will be able to predict confidently that there will be life all over the universe. Somewhere out there will be intelligent beings. What might happen then currently lies in the realm of science fiction.

The future lies in more missions to Mars. So far all missions have been one-way and robotic, but plans are underway for a mission to return samples from Mars, and sometime this century there will be astronauts on Mars, not in "colonies" but in research bases like those in Antarctica. It is inevitable.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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OPINION: Why we need a human mission to Mars

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If we want to know whether there is life beyond Earth then the quickest way to answer that question is to explore Mars. That exploration is currently being done by remote space probes sent from Earth.

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Is commercial spaceflight the future of space travel?

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Is commercial spaceflight the future of space travel?

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Private companies such as SpaceX (whom just launched a commercial flight successfully) have made some of the world's most powerful rockets. Private companies have the capability of using modern technology and forming budgets based on their own means.  As the New York Times states "SpaceX Lifts NASA Astronauts to Orbit, Launching New Era of Spaceflight," (New York Times). Yes, commercial spaceflight is the future of space travel, more specifically SpaceX, is the future of space travel.

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The trip to the space station was the first from American soil since 2011 when the space shuttles were retired.

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transcript

Watch: SpaceX Launches Astronauts Into Orbit

It's the first time a private company has launched astronauts into orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday.

Dragon SpaceX, go for launch. SpaceX Dragon, we're a go for launch. Let's light this candle. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Ignition. Liftoff! The Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon. Go NASA! Go SpaceX! Godspeed, Bob and Doug! America has launched. So rises a new era of American spaceflight. And with it, the ambitions of a new generation continuing the dream.

It's the first time a private company has launched astronauts into orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday. Credit Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. - The United States opened a new era of human space travel on Saturday as a private company for the first time launched astronauts into orbit, nearly a decade after the government retired the storied space shuttle program in the aftermath of national tragedy.

Two American astronauts lifted off at 3:22 p.m. from a familiar setting, the same Florida launchpad that once served Apollo missions and the space shuttles. But the rocket and capsule that lofted them out of the atmosphere were a new sight for many - built and operated not by NASA but SpaceX, the company founded by the billionaire Elon Musk to pursue his dream of sending colonists to Mars.

Crowds of spectators including President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence watched and cheered as the countdown ticked to zero, and the engines of a Falcon 9 rocket roared to life.

Rising slowly at first, the rocket then shot like a sleek, silvery javelin into humid skies, three days after an earlier launch was canceled because of concerns about lightning and other unsafe weather.

It was a moment of triumph and perhaps nostalgia for the country, a welcome reminder of America's global pre-eminence in science, technological innovation and private enterprise at a time its prospects and ambitions have been clouded by the coronavirus pandemic, economic uncertainty and political strife. Millions around the world watched the launch online and on television, many from self-imposed quarantine in their homes.

Mr. Trump, who watched from a rooftop at the space center, called it "an inspiration for our country" after the ship lifted off.

"Today's launch makes clear the commercial space industry is the future," Mr. Trump said in later remarks in the giant Vehicle Assembly Building where the Saturn 5 moon rocket was once stacked.

"We have created the envy of the world and will soon be landing on Mars and will soon have the greatest weapons ever imagined in history," he added.

The Falcon 9 carried a Crew Dragon capsule, guided by teams of SpaceX personnel in control centers in Florida and Hawthorne, Calif. It was scheduled to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday morning.

Aboard are two veterans of the astronauts corps, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas O. Hurley. NASA selected the two men along with a group of their colleagues to be the first customers of space capsules built by private companies.

It was the first launch of NASA astronauts from the United States since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011. In the years since, NASA has paid Russia's space program to transport its astronauts to the space station. And with this success, NASA, to its own delight, has begun ceding this task to SpaceX and other companies, and it opens new possibilities for entrepreneurs looking to make money off the planet.

The transformation at NASA, especially of its human spaceflight program, has been slow in coming, and Mr. Musk, a 48-year-old native of South Africa who started SpaceX with little knowledge of rockets, is an unlikely person to be at the vanguard.

"I'm really quite overcome with emotion on this day," Mr. Musk said during a news conference after the launch. "It's hard to talk, frankly."

At the turn of the millennium, Mr. Musk, still in his 20s, was chief executive of PayPal, making his first fortune when eBay bought that company.

Mr. Musk selected a quixotic project as the focus of his newfound wealth: sending a small greenhouse to Mars.

Because rockets were so expensive in the United States, he went to Russia seeking to buy a launch on a converted Russian ballistic missile. Unable to close a deal with the Russians, Mr. Musk turned to Jim Cantrell, an aerospace consultant accompanying him on the trip, and Michael D. Griffin, who would later become NASA administrator, and said, "Guys, I think we can build these rockets ourselves."

He founded SpaceX in 2002 and soon vaulted into the popular imagination, a strong-willed figure who clashed with regulators and can sound both humble and full of ambition verging on hubris.

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The NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken as they made their way to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday. Credit... John Raoux/Associated Press

The first three launches of his Falcon 1 rocket failed. With one more failure, SpaceX would have joined the graveyard of failed rocket start-ups. The fourth Falcon 1 made it to orbit.

"The fourth launch worked, or that would have been it for SpaceX," Mr. Musk said in a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in 2017. "But fate liked us that day."

During this time, NASA was going through upheaval after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, which disintegrated during re-entry into the atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts onboard.

President George W. Bush decided the remaining three shuttles would be retired and then the money devoted toward the shuttles could be used for returning to the moon.

The rockets for that moon program, Constellation, would be built and operated by NASA, just as in the past.

But Dr. Griffin, who had accompanied Mr. Musk on that trip to Moscow, opened a competition for companies to bid on contracts to carry cargo to the space station.

SpaceX was one of the two companies that NASA selected, and investments from the space agency helped Mr. Musk's company develop the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule, which evolved into the Crew Dragon spacecraft that is now en route to the space station.

During a flight in 2015, SpaceX pulled off a feat that seemed like something out of science fiction. Usually, the first stage of a rocket, also known as a booster, falls into the ocean, becoming trash after just one use. On this flight, the Falcon 9 booster, after it dropped away, turned around and returned, landing vertically at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX now routinely lands and reuses its boosters - including the one used on Saturday - passing the cost savings onto its customers.

The Obama administration canceled the Constellation program. But it needed a replacement for taking astronauts to the space station.

Taking inspiration from the successful cargo program, NASA sought proposals from companies to start transporting people as well. In 2014, the space agency selected Boeing and SpaceX.

A goal of the program was to free up money in NASA's budget to devote to more ambitious projects like sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

It will certainly save taxpayers the expense of paying Russia to take NASA astronauts to space. This month, the space agency agreed to buy one more seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket for $90 million.

The developmental costs to NASA of commercial crew programs totaled about $6 billion, Philip McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development reported this month. That's a considerably cheaper way to get to the space station than NASA's previous plan of using an Orion capsule designed for deep-space missions and the Ares I rocket that was being developed as part of Constellation. Mr. McAllister said cost estimates for getting that system to the launchpad were $24.5 billion to $34.5 billion.

But while NASA may spend less on trips to the space station, it is still developing a larger rocket for human spaceflight at Congress's direction called the Space Launch System and has continued work on Orion. Reports by NASA's inspector general find that the program is now billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

Still, by supporting SpaceX's and Boeing's spacecraft, NASA may help the companies incubate other kinds of business in space.

Two companies, Axiom Space and Space Adventures, have already announced plans to buy launches in SpaceX's capsule to transport non-NASA passengers - space tourists - to the space station or on shorter orbital trips. NASA also confirmed this month that Tom Cruise expressed interest in using the space station for a film.

NASA's next aim is to try this commercial approach on the moon, where its future seems less certain.

The agency signed three companies, including Space X, last month to produce three landers that could be used to take astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Early prototypes of SpaceX's proposed lander, a giant vessel named Starship, have so far failed spectacularly; its latest model was destroyed in an explosion on Friday after the end of an engine test firing.

Another recipient of this lunar lander program's funding is Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Mr. Bezos's wealth ensures that he can make long-term investments, regardless of the whims of space policy in the United States, in his pursuit of what he describes as a future with millions of people living and working in space.

NASA officials noted that the lunar lander proposals were optimistic about how quickly the spacecraft could be developed; the Trump administration has committed to a 2024 mission. Yet, the designs rely on rockets that have yet to launch.

NASA, spurred by the National Space Council, of which Mr. Pence is chairman, is also taking steps it hopes will help commercial space stations replace the International Space Station near the end of the decade. Axiom, a company led by a former NASA manager of the space station, is building a commercial module to be attached to I.S.S. and when I.S.S. is retired, that module will be detached to form a piece of an independent station owned and operated by Axiom.

Commercial ventures have already used the International Space Station to conduct pharmaceutical research, manufacture optical fibers and launch satellites. New space stations could make it easier for other ventures to take advantage of near gravity-free environments.

"Let's have a robotic factory so the gravity disturbances are nil and you can produce high-quality films and process products and pharmaceutical drugs," said Jeffrey Manber, chief executive of NanoRacks, a company that flies experiments to the space station. "I'm not dependent on the government to send my tourists, my honeymooners or my scientists."

However uncertain and far-off that future feels, SpaceX and NASA appeared energized by the prospects of the successful launch on Saturday.

Just after noon, the astronauts were seen off by their families ahead of their drive to the launchpad. Mr. Behnken asked his son, Theodore, "Are you going to listen to Mommy and make her life easy?" referring to Megan McArthur, his wife and a fellow astronaut. Theodore, 6, replied, "Let's light this candle!" (Mr. Hurley, too, is married to a fellow astronaut, Karen Nyberg.)

Within the hour, the men had boarded the Crew Dragon capsule and began the hours of prelaunch procedures. Once they were sealed in the capsule, Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley, and all watching them, waited patiently for about two hours to see if the weather would cooperate with the day's trip.

And their patience paid off. The weather cleared as the rocket was loaded with propellant. And after the countdown and liftoff, a voice from SpaceX's launch team bid the astronauts on a safe mission: "Go NASA. Go SpaceX. Godspeed, Bob and Doug!"

Peter Baker and Mariel Padilla contributed reporting.

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SpaceX Lifts NASA Astronauts to Orbit, Launching New Era of Spaceflight

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The trip to the space station was the first from American soil since 2011 when the space shuttles were retired. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. - The United States opened a new era of human space travel on Saturday as a private company for the first time launched astronauts into orbit, nearly a decade after the government retired the storied space shuttle program in the aftermath of national tragedy.

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Roach describes why she picked the topic of space to write about, "What drew me to the topic of space exploration was not the heroics and adventure stories, but the very human and sometimes absurd struggles behind them," (Roach page 18). I find this so interesting, the way Roach approached the subject of space, and made it into a very entertaining book.

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Mary Roach began her early work in writing freelance articles for the local newspaper Sunday magazine. Later on, her editors moved onto bigger and brighter things and so did Roach. Mary has written multiple books using her research to guide the composition and thought process of her books.

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Mary Roach, Author of Packing for Mars, Stiff, Spook and Bonk

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I have no hobbies. I mostly just work on my books and hang out with my family and friends. I enjoy bird-watching--though the hours don't agree with me--backpacking, thrift stores, overseas supermarkets, Scrabble, mangoes, and that late-night "Animal Planet" show about horrific animals such as the parasitic worm that attaches itself to fishes' eyeballs but makes up for it by leading the fish around.

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Why is it that private companies have taken the lead in developing reusable rockets and not NASA?

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Why is it that private companies have taken the lead in developing reusable rockets and not NASA?

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NASA is more concerned about cost. It cost NASA a lot more to make reusable rockets and is a major investment that could be used elsewhere. When the first Apollo missions took place, NASA wasn't planning on frequently going to space, so reusable rockets weren't a thought. It is also extremely difficult to make rockets reusable, SpaceX has been working for almost 14 years to successfully make reusable rockets, which NASA didn't have the time nor money to focus on.

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Why does NASA not develop reusable rockets? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Robert Frost, who works at NASA, on Quora:
NASA isn't really in the rocket development business. NASA only gets involved in rocket building when the commercial market doesn't have a product that can fulfill NASA's needs. NASA doesn't use enough rockets to make reusability worthwhile.

Reusable rockets are only valuable if the frequency of launches is great enough to outweigh the cost of developing and utilizing the technology.

It would have been silly to waste Apollo project funds trying to make the Saturn V reusable. Only about a dozen launches of the Saturn V were planned, so it was cheaper to use a disposable launch vehicle.

When it came time for the Space Shuttle, NASA did plan to do many and frequent launches, so the Orbiter and the Solid Rocket Boosters were designed to be reusable. It wasn't deemed worthwhile to make the External Tank reusable.

Although the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) were reusable and going to be used on the SLS rocket, NASA doesn't plan to reuse them. The refurbishing and recertification costs make reuse more expensive than manufacturing new engines.

The French and the Russians did, at one time, work together in an attempt to make the Ariane 5 reusable, but the hardware that would be needed to support the return of the vehicle became too large to make the effort worthwhile.

Making a launch vehicle reusable is very difficult. It took SpaceX 14 years to do the first part. It was a large investment for them and it required modern technologies that did not exist when most of the current launch vehicles were being designed.

Even today, with SpaceX having partially demonstrated the technology, some of the launch vehicle manufacturers are still not convinced that it would be worthwhile for them to invest their own resources into their upcoming vehicle designs.

In an interview about the Ariane 6, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israel said:

It is a beautiful technological achievement in the context of a mission in LEO asking little performance from the launcher, freeing the performance required by recovery. But for the economic equation, things are still very uncertain. Performance loss on recovery, lower industrial rate, cost of refurbishment of the first stage, difficulty convincing customers to use a used launcher, uncertainties about the reliability: it would be a mistake to consider reuse is the alpha and omega of disruptive innovation in the field of launchers.
There may be other ways to innovate, such as micro-launcher I had discussed this summer after meetings with players in Silicon Valley who want very cheap launches, less than 10 million, for satellites of several tens of kilograms. Especially, in the European context, with markets and accessible rates lower than those offered to American launchers, the cardinal priority is the road map defined at the last ministerial conference of ESA (European Space Agency): Vega C Ariane in 2018 and 6 in 2020, as part of a new governance which always aim at making cost more competitive.

Note: Arianespace isn't totally opposed to the idea; they have been working for six years on a reusable rocket named Adeline, and hope to fly it by 2025.
This question originally appeared on Quora. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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Why Doesn't NASA Develop Reusable Rockets?

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Why does NASA not develop reusable rockets? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Robert Frost, who works at NASA, on Quora: NASA isn't really in the rocket development business.

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What happens if a rocket restocking the ISS does not make it?

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What happens if a rocket restocking the ISS does not make it?

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In 2015 three consecutive resupply missions failed but luckily enough the ISS is stocked with extra months worths of supplies. An article by vox supports this, "The world's space agencies try to plan for the worst-case scenario — so the space station is typically equipped with several extra months' worth of food and other supplies," ( Vox "A resupply mission to the space station has failed. What will the astronauts do?").

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The astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station are having trouble getting new supplies.

Yesterday, SpaceX launched a rocket to ferry 4,100 pounds of food, scientific equipment, and other cargo up to the space station - but it exploded shortly after launch due to unknown technical problems:

Meanwhile, the previous resupply mission - a Russian cargo capsule launched in April - went spinning out of control in orbit due to problems with its rocket, and eventually disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere.

The good news? The three astronauts in space won't starve, as there's plenty of extra food on board. But delivering supplies to a tiny outpost 249 miles above the Earth isn't easy - and this puts some extra pressure on Russia's upcoming mission on July 3.

The Space Station has a few extra months of food

The world's space agencies try to plan for the worst-case scenario - so the space station is typically equipped with several extra months' worth of food and other supplies.

Right now, NASA has about three months' worth of food on board, so the astronauts will be fine until the Russian supply run later this week. They'd even be fine if the next cargo mission, scheduled to be delivered by the Japanese space agency in mid-August, failed too.

However, if that somehow happened, those on board -including Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, who are spending a full year in space as part of a new experiment - might have to dip into their last few months' worth of food and start eating a bit less.

They should get an additional delivery from another Russian mission, scheduled for July 22, but that ship will primarily be carrying another team of three astronauts, so its cargo capacity is limited. Still, cutting back to a reduced diet would allow them to stretch food and other supplies until late September, before which additional SpaceX and Russian missions are scheduled to run.

Other space station inhabitants have been forced to do this before. In 2004 - in the midst of a hiatus of Space Shuttle flights due to the Columbia disaster - occupants had to start eating a stripped-down diet (consuming 2,700 calories a day, instead of 3,000) as they awaited a delayed resupply capsule. When it finally arrived, they had just a few weeks' worth of food left - if it had been delayed again, they would have been forced to evacuate.

Most of the water and oxygen are recycled on board

Because it's so expensive to carry any mass up into orbit, the space station is equipped with sophisticated systems that recycle water and oxygen. This means that if resupply missions were halted, the crew would run out of food way before they ran out of water or oxygen.

Aboard the space station, all the water vapor exhaled by astronauts - as well as the sweat and urine they excrete - is purified back into fresh water for them to use. If this water wasn't recycled, about 60,000 pounds of it per year would need to be sent up to support a six-person crew. (Additionally, if the water vapor weren't sucked out of the air, it'd gradually cause the station's components to rust.)

Some of this water is also used as a raw material for the station's oxygen production systems. Electricity (generated by solar panels) is used to split water molecules into breathable oxygen and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen used to be vented out to space, but a system installed in 2011 combines it with carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts to produce potable water and methane - so the loop of oxygen and water used on board is essentially closed.

Still, small amounts of water are lost in a few places in the system: the water purification process produces some unusable salty brines, and some water vapor is lost whenever the airlocks are opened. To address this, some tanks of water and backup tanks of oxygen are sent up on resupply missions as reserves.

But this failure could put more pressure on upcoming missions

Due to these redundancies, the astronauts on board the space station certainly won't starve or die of thirst anytime soon. But the failure of this SpaceX resupply mission isn't ideal - especially because of a few other recent events.

NASA contracts with two private companies - SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation - to carry out its resupply missions. But Orbital's rocket exploded on the launch pad in October, and its missions have been put on hold since. NASA says the company plans to resume missions later this year, but an exact date isn't yet set.

Additionally, the European Space Agency recently ended its role as a supplier for the space station, with its fifth and final cargo mission in February. And SpaceX could potentially put future launches on hold while this recent problem is investigated, perhaps delaying its scheduled September launch.

That would mean that the number of resupply options for the space station would have quickly dwindled to two: Russia and the Japanese Space Agency.

This puts a lot of pressure on their missions to run smoothly. It could force them to carry extra food at the expense of planned scientific equipment.

And in the extreme worst-case scenario, if there were problems with both the Russian or Japanese missions, it could even force the space station's occupants to evacuate - which, among other things, would ruin the ongoing experiment in which a pair of astronauts are spending an entire year in orbit.

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A resupply mission to the space station has failed. What will the astronauts do?

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The astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station are having trouble getting new supplies. Yesterday, SpaceX launched a rocket to ferry 4,100 pounds of food, scientific equipment, and other cargo up to the space station - but it exploded shortly after launch due to unknown technical problems: Meanwhile, the previous resupply mission - a Russian cargo capsule launched in April - went spinning out of control in orbit due to problems with its rocket, and eventually disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere.

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Most importantly, as we have learned in class, they're are signs of erosion of Mars which tells scientist that there was once water on Mars, hopefully that time will come again. Landforms on Mars such as the Kasei Valles, Shalbatana Valles and Valles Marineris hints to these ideas. Signs of water on Mars may indicate that there was also once life on Mars, if there was, there may still be!

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The 'grand canyon" of Mars and about the same length of the United States. A website named Space tells us how water was once found on Mars in this very canyon, "The canyon system contains a number of different features that give clues to its formation. Collapse pits created by rushing water eating away at the land, massive floods, and seeping along canyon walls all point to water just at or beneath the surface at some point in the Martian history. Cracks in the crust, cliffs and walls, and landslides also exist along the expanse of Valles Marineris," (Space, Redd).

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Facts about Mars (as we learned in our comparison of Mars and Earth assignment)

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Facts about Mars (as we learned in our comparison of Mars and Earth assignment)

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-Mars has slightly longer days than earth by about 37 minutes.
-Mars rotates the sun much slower than Earth so its years are longer
-Both planets have very similar tilts, therefore seasons are similar

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Roach describes how Human beings have never been away from mother earth. Thus an even better reason to explore, the Earth is like a needle in the haystack of the universe. There is so much we can learn from exploring. Roach states,

“In the history of human beings, no one has ever been in a situation when Mother Earth, and all of her associated nurturing and comforting aspects...has been reduced to insignificance in the sky...It seems possible that it will induce some state of internal uncoupling from the Earth.” (Roach page 72). If we can leave Earth to go to the moon, we can also leave to go to Mars.

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Traveling through space let alone going to Mars was once an idea and now its a possibility.  A century ago space travel was just a dream and now it's happening. Roach's describes why space is so incredible, it's so surreal and real at the same time. Roach states,

"Space doesn't just encompass the sublime and the ridiculousness. It erases the line between," (Roach page 19).

That line between symbolizes the space between possibility and reality. Space travel is one of the most incredible discoveries known to man, a thing that was once a mear theory, hypotheses and idea. Scientists are doing the impossible by erasing that line.

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There is enough evidence that scenticents believe there was once Water and Life on Mars.  With technology and what we already know about Mars, it's believed that Mars is habitable.

"Mars would be not just a habitable planet, but a second home," (Planetary.org).