Nasa; The Past, Present and Future

In one point in your lives, everyone has looked up into the night sky and thought about what is out there. To us from earth it appears as just black empty space dotted with stars. But to the employees of NASA, that plain black sky symbolizes an never ending frontier that we are just now starting to explore. This endless boundary of space has been a puzzle for us to try and understand, but with the advancements that NASA is making, we are coming closer all the time to figuring out our universe. NASA, which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, serves the purpose of being the pioneers for the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research. And in my speech I will tell you why NASA was started and its history, the invention and use of the Space shuttles, and what the future holds for NASA.

The history of NASA originates during the 1950's when the soviets and their space program launched sputnik, the first satellite, into orbit. This caused President Eisenhower to launch our own space program to rival that of the soviets during the cold war. So because of the fear of the soviets gaining an advantage on us, NASA was created on July 29 1958, to beat the Russians in the space race. NASA's earliest programs mainly involved human space flight and was first named under the Mercury program. The Mercury program made two giant leaps to push ahead of the Russians, by making Alan B. Sheppard the first man to enter space, and the having John Glenn become the first man to orbit the earth. Both of these accomplishments help trigger the research for a new mission called Gemini.

The Gemini missions were conducted to help understand the influence space had on man during an extended period of time, and it gave crucial data to help start the Apollo missions. The Apollo missions were designed to put a man on the moon and that's exactly what happened on July 20th 1969 when Neil Armstrong become the first man on the moon. This mission was called Apollo 11 and was a milestone for all of America and a positive sign that we were ahead of our enemies, the Russians. But these missions all had one flaw, the rockets the used cost millions of dollars and could only be used once. This problem soon became fixed with the creation of the space shuttles.

The importance of the space shuttle can be summarized by saying from shuttle commander Eileen Collins, "The space shuttle is an essential step toward our goal of continuing to lead the world in space science, human space flight and space exploration." The space shuttles are the first orbital spacecraft that are partially reusable. They can carry a crew and a payload into space and are able to be reused upon return. They are also the first spacecrafts that are able to land on a runway like a plane, instead of using the less reliable parachute method which was used on earlier missions. There have been six space shuttles built to date, the Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

The enterprise has never actually been used in a mission, and was built for experimental use only. The space shuttles are tiled in a type of ceramics that have to withstand heat as hot as 1,500 degrees Celsius during re-entry. This requires the space shuttles to be inspected and refurbished after every mission, but is necessary to keep the safety of the astronauts. But even with all of the precautions taken, the fleet has lost two ships in all of its missions. Both Challenger and Columbia have disintegrated during their missions and their entire crews were lost. But even with these tragedies, the space shuttle is easily the most impressive machine that NASA has ever created, or at least to this day it is.

NASA has one of the brightest futures because of all the new advances in technology and the ability to explore the universe. There is so much more NASA has to do, it can be explained by a quote from its website, "Though nearly 50 years old, NASA is only beginning the most exciting part of its existence." NASA's mission statement as read on their website is "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can." The program has already stated that it is building a new spacecraft called Orion, which will replace the space shuttle by the year 2014. Orion is part of the vision that is helping reach the goals set by NASA to get back to the moon and start building a base on it by 2020. This base will help with the requirements for the next vision of NASA, putting a man on mars. They plan to accomplish that by the year 2037, and would be a major milestone for space exploration.

NASA has came from being a startup program in the 50's just to compete with the Russians, to a state of the art that is the world leader in space exploration. It all started by becoming setting many firsts when it comes to the space race, and was a big reason why NASA is the leader in space exploration today. Another reason is because of the space shuttle and the ability it has had to make multiple flights throughout its career. But with newer technology on the way, NASA will always be reaching out into the endless frontier.