Monday, April 9, 2012

Space Exploration, Is it Worth the Cost?

  Have you ever heard about space exploration. Would you like to do one? Well, I admit it is interesting. But, is it worth the cost? It is quite expensive to equip everything needed for going up in space. And when you come up, the missions and to stay on the International Space Station, you need a lot of money. To look on the bright side, after all, this all pays of. By  exploring space, we find new stuff hidden in it. And when the astronauts come back to Earth, they tell the others about their foundations and slowly everybody finds out. In return, these people get money. What you spend, you earn as a reward.
      Three options to do and save more money is to let people go to moons and planets, doing research on Earth. The third option we could do is send machines, or robots with installed cameras on them, so we can follow them on TV.
         In sending people to space missions the goods are that we, on Earth have many details about what the people saw. The bad is that it costs a lot of money. When it comes to doing research on Earth, the good is that it costs the least of the three ways I mentioned but the bad is that when we do it, we don't get so much information and resources than actually going there. The last option which I suggested was that we send machines and robots up to space. The good is that it cannot get affected by the gases and material up there, where we can die if we do something wrong. The bad is that we, who are standing on Earth and watching the snapshot, don't get so much information, because the camera cannot record everything and again, it cannot bring any evidence back to Earth.
If I am a part of the congress, my top 5 choices for what to spend most money on would look like this:
1: Food and Drink- Because they are most important for life.
2: Medicine- We need to make sure our citizens are healthy.
3: Education- Everybody needs to know at least something.
4: Transportation- We need transportation to travel, but they pollute, so that's why it is not higher on the list, We could survive with bikes and electricity-efficient vehicles.
5:  Architecture- We want to make sure to keep up with our architecture.

  Probably, on this list Space Exploration would go either under number 7 or 8. I would be able to have a world without that.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Mars Forms Triangle with Moon and star tonight

   By: Joe Roa
On: Discovery News

  If you were outside yesterday evening, you would have seen a triangle formed by the moon, the star Regulus and believe it or not, Mars. A month ago, Mars came to it's closest distance from Earth, 62.6 million miles (100.7 million kilometers). After that, Mars was getting further from us.
    Yesterday, Mars was 70.7 million miles from Earth ( 113.8 million km). Still, it will be shining brightly. In the chart of the brightest stars in space,Moon, Venus, Jupiter and and stars Sirius and Canopus. If you look closer, you will see that the planet is more orange-yellowish than red.
     The star, Regulus is the first magnitude star in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. it is the 21st in the ranking of the star brightness. It is only one-sixth the brightness of Mars.
 The star and Mars are separated by 5 degrees, and the moon is 10 degrees beneath the star and Mars. To measure the size of the triangle, it is equal to one fist.
   Mars is currently in a backward motion. It is traveling toward the west. The consequence of this is that it is getting closer to the Regulus, the star. This will end in less than two weeks though. It's retrograde path will come to an end and continues traveling toward the East. If you look at the sky at 10:30 pm, you will see Mars at it's highest point. It will be more than 60 degrees above the southern horizon.
    Mars was not the only thing worth searching for. Venus passed the western skies on the same night. This is the order of the triangle at 9:00 pm.

   
  I think this is amazing happening, but I am sad that I missed it. It would be a great adventure to see something like this.  It was a clear night, so you could have seen the triangle