Humans answer the call to space

gzlaser

from 21st Century

FIFTY years ago, Russia launched the first space flight, Sputnik. The US quickly followed and put a man on the moon 12 years later. Now China plans to blast off its own lunar orbiter this week.

What drives this fascination with space? The urge to explore may very well be ingrained in our genetic makeup.

At least, Jeffrey Friedman, director of the Starr Center for Human Genetics at the Rockefeller University in the US, thinks so. \"You sort of have direct evidence of it in the history of human migrations,'' he told The New York Times.

Today, that urge is still very present. For instance, the US and China are attempting to reach the moon to test for isotope Helium 3. This non-radioactive substance is thought to be a powerful, non-polluting energy source.

Critics argue that we do not have the technology needed to release its energy potential. \"Helium 3 requires a temperature of almost 1 billion degrees. Planning this type of reaction would be premature,\" said Lev Zelyony, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute.

Other programs seek to mine the moon for titanium that could be transported back to the Earth.

More serious still, however, is NASA's (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) proposal to establish a base on the moon from which to reach Mars by 2037.

Uncertainty

Going to Mars would tell us more about the Earth's origins – whether the life on our planet sprang from another, or if the Earth came into being separately.

However, the estimated $3 million trip to Mars would take three years or more. It would also be fraught with danger. A lack of gravity makes the human body waste away; flares of radiation from the sun could kill astronauts before they reached the planet.

But, NASA remains intent on the mission. \"We must recognize that progress through human exploration and discovery is a goal worthy of the costs and risks of the enterprise,\" said NASA's Michael Griffin.

Beyond these government space programs, the most rapidly developing kind of space travel is tourism.

Mega-rich businessmen, such as Richard Branson (founder of UK's Virgin Group), are pouring money into their childhood dream. Branson is already taking bookings for $218,000 flights into space, set to start in 18 months.

Patricia Grace Smith, of the Federal Aviation Administration in the US, is optimistic about such enterprise. \"When I look out 50 years from now, I fully expect that we will have actual, operational spaceports.''

But judging by the last 50 years, the only certainty about space travel is its very uncertainty.

\"The one thing of which we can be certain,'' Griffin wrote in a recent essay on the website of the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, \"is that in trying to envision the world of 2057, two generations in the future, we will be wrong.''

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migration 移民

isotope 同位素

Helium 氦(化学元素，符号为He)

radioactive 放射性的，有辐射能的

premature 未成熟的

titanium 钛(化学元素，符号为Ti)

envision 想象，预想

spaceport 太空船发射降落场