Is space exploration just satisfying our country's curiosity while spending billions of dollars? Space exploration is not just an interest but at the same time an investment for the world's future. The space age began October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and ever since then people have associated space exploration with fiction and imagination. (TWAC, p.392) However space exploration is far from fiction. Searching for, as well as developing, life outside planet earth could possibly lead us to improve our population problems and diminishing resources. Growing more resources in space would be a significant step for a longer human existence. Along with the opportunity of extending life on earth, the business industries have many prospective ideas. With the existence of water on the Moon, starting colonies there does not seem that far fetched to many scientists. The US Space program and its Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) have plans for humans to land on Mars and eventually be-able to survive there. People should explore outside the earth because we have the technology and opportunity presents itself. As President Bush stated, "it is a human destiny, manifest destiny, or maybe just American destiny to go to other worlds [(if you believe in this faith)]" (TWAC 401) NASA has been an impact to developing space technology with the hopes to create life on mars. .
Mars has been seen as a potential home for life in the future. NASA has considered this planet most suitable after a " Martian meteorite harboring fossil microscope organism was discovered on earth in 1997" (TWAC p.393) Christopher P. McKay, a NASA scientist whose specialty is astrobiology, agrees that sending flower seeds to Mars is good idea.(TWAC p.393) McKay states that "One important way to assess the biological potential of Mars is to send life there -using to the extent possible the sunlight, soil, and nutrients available in the Martian environment.