SPACE EXPLORATION

Space Exploration



Human Enhancements and the Race for Space Exploration

Annotated Bibliography

Shiga, D. (2011). The space race takes off again. New Scientist, 211(2820), 6-7.

No one knows what will happen to NASA's budget with the retirement of the shuttles. Some estimates have put the cost of each shuttle mission at as much as $1.5 billion - NASA itself reckons $450 million. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that the US would continue its dominance of space. "We are not ending human space flight; we are recommitting ourselves to it." From 2012, NASA wants to put $1 billion per year into tech development, but a Congressional budget blueprint passed last year would halve that.

Sietzen, J. (2004). A new vision for SPACE. Astronomy, 32(5), 48.

The article discusses the new vision for space exploration, which is privatization. Private companies are well out of the blocks. SpaceX headed by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has been in the spotlight with recent test flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space capsule, which the company hopes to use to run a space taxi service for NASA astronauts to the ISS. It is not the only one. Boeing is working on a crew capsule of its own, called the CST-100, with a view to winning space taxi business not only from NASA but Las Vegas company Bigelow Aerospace too.

Collins, Martin J. (1999). Space Race: The U.S.-USSR Competition to Reach the Moon. Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications.

Over the past two decades, politicians have tried to test these recommendations. "The first space race" of the USSR and the USA in the early 1960s gave way to attempts to control space-based cooperation in the 1980s. In the next decade, there was competition in a monitoring system for ballistic missiles. In the 2000s, have followed a fresh outbreak in connection with progress in the development of celestial bodies and beginning the process of militarization of the near space.

Scott, David, and Aleksei Leonov. (2004). Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.

By the end of the first decade of 21st century attempts, cooperative space exploration gave way to a new "space race". The Great Powers again consider the activities in outer space as a way for the creation of military technology and the acquisition of advantageous strategic position. The rebirth of the projects is near-Earth space militarization and of victory in military conflicts through ...