Despite the fact that I am a history and philosophy major, and that I love the humanities far above all other academic fields, nearly all of my college friends are STEM majors. So, being surrounded my STEM talk so frequently, I have somewhat of a knowledge and appreciation for the sciences myself, and above all, space exploration fascinates me in that it lies at the forefront of scientific knowledge and human historical progress.
Space exploration, past, present and future, is a widely discussed topic and there is certainly no shortage of material on the subject. In my opinion, among the most interesting and groundbreaking figures in modern space exploration technology is Elon Musk, a South African born Canadian-American businessman known for Pay Pal and Tesla Motors. In the aerospace technology field, he has broken onto the scene as the CEO, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and founder of SpaceX, a private company which strives to make space travel cheaper and more efficient. Space X currently has a contract with NASA that allows the private corporation to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). They use the Falcon 9 rocket, innovative in that the first stage of the rocket is fully reusable, and actually lands remotely after delivering its cargo to the ISS. Here’s a short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGUQySBikQ.
But I think it’s safe to say that when a contemporary thinks of space exploration, he or she finds herself anticipating Mars colonies, or at least a “Mars Landing” similar to the moon landings of the late 60’s and early 70’s. And while an actual trip to Mars may still be only a very remote and distant prospect, not to come into fruition until much later in this century, geologists, biologists, and many other varieties of scientists are already busy anticipating the possible pitfalls and stumbling blocks of such a journey, while not neglecting the potential rewards. For example, while putting together a scholarly paper on some of the chemical composites on Mars, scientists Robert Pellenbarg, Michael Max, and Stephen Clifford still put human colonization at the center of their study http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002JE001901/full. Everywhere, or at least very frequently, the question of Mars colonization seems to be at the forefront of forward thinking people’s minds when it comes to space exploration, both among the laymen and specialists. But Mars isn’t the only celestial body in our solar system to attract a disproportionate amount of attention. Europa, speculated to contain huge amounts of water beneath its icy surface, is a serious candidate for further unmanned NASA missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-mission/. Titan, too, is famous among space enthusiasts for its liquid methane and ethane lakes, which unsurprisingly has captured the imaginations of many. Some believe the conditions on Titan are similar to those on early earth. Pluto, recently, was the subject of talk after pictures were taken of it by the New Horizons probe when it flew past the dwarf planet on July 14th , 2015, providing us for the first time with detailed photos of the planet which since 2006 has been the subject of much “debate”.