NASA is a multibillion dollar organization and one would think with all the brainpower they have, everything would be under control. A teenage boy in England had a school project. The project had to do with analyzing radiation data which had come from NASA. It was radiation data from the space station. The boy looked at it and noticed immediately there was some readings which were in the minus and realizing you couldn’t have less than zero radiation he told his teacher, who in turn contacted NASA. NASA scientists looked at the data and realized there was something wrong with their logarithm. One has to wonder how an agency like this could have missed something so obvious. They stated they noticed it before, but thought it only occurred infrequently. My question is if the logarithm is inaccurate couldn’t the rest of the numbers possibly be wrong?

There is probably a lot going on at NASA which we are not aware of and there is no denying the fact NASA has pioneered a lot of things which many private companies and countries are building upon. One of the obvious things were the moon landings. The data from those landings has no doubt found its way into many of the space programs around today. Several countries are getting ready to land a man on the moon and even the United States is planning to go back there. I think one of the important things NASA has recently implemented was software which will control the shape of telescopes put in space. This type of software has existed on the earth for years and helps telescopes on earth adjust for atmospheric conditions. Mirrors are flexed thousands of times a second, depending on atmospheric waves. Using such a set up in space may make it possible to get clearer images in some circumstances.

NASA is extremely interested in exoplanets which are able to support human life. When we look at these planets we have to realize they are beyond current announced capabilities to reach. Knowing this, why is there such a feverish search for planets in other systems which are in habitable zones? The habitable zone is one where a planet is at a distance from its star which is conducive to human life existing on it. Scientists at NASA got very excited when they found such planets orbiting our nearest star. The star is still about 4 light years away so supposedly we can’t reach it. Could it be we have the technology to reach this star in an acceptable period of time, but the technology is secret? This is certainly not out of the realm of possibility. It would explain the excitement scientists are showing over these discoveries. They could be getting excited, because they know we are going to explore these places, but it will be kept secret from the public.

Problems in the public getting information on technology occur when this technology is classified for military reasons. It certainly could be possible being able to travel at such an excessive speed is now a military secret. Why would we want to keep something like this a secret in the first place? It’s not as if we are talking about secret weapons and such? We may not want other nations to know we are colonizing other worlds. I’m not saying this is what we are doing, but I am saying it would account for a lot of the excitement in finding which exoplanet could support human life. There has been a lot of talk lately which states the reason scientists are getting so excited is they are looking for intelligent life, not necessarily human life. This is also a possibility, but I remember somebody once saying be careful what you wish for. According to the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking, we are taking a big chance trying to contact aliens, because he believes it could hurt the human race tremendously. He talks about how Europeans were more advanced than natives in the countries they went to and destroyed many of those races. He feels advanced aliens could treat us the same way.

NASA has different departments and one of the things they try and do is develop more efficient aircraft. One of the ways they do this is by building model airplanes and testing them. If they hit upon a feature which improves an airplane they will then test it on full size planes. This department has existed since the beginning and one of the engineers there stated many other NASA employees wished they worked in this department and I can see why. It certainly looks like fun developing these models.

NASA’s predecessor was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics also known as NACA. When NASA began on October 1ST, 1958 it slowly began to absorb this agency and its eight thousand employees. Many say the reason for the existence of NASA was the launching of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union. They claim this prodded the United States into action. I remember those days and the first thing which happened after the launch was people were very scared and believed the Soviets were capable of destroying us from space. The truth was all they had done was launch a tiny satellite that gave off a radio signal, but it was still quite an accomplishment being the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. It certainly sent our government into a tizzy and we became determined to become part of the space race and put a man on the moon, which we did.

Not everything NASA did worked according to plan. A very good example of this was the development of the space shuttle. NASA had developed a small shuttle, but the military insisted it be expanded so it could launch secret satellites into space. Because of this demand external fuel tanks had to be attached to the body of the shuttle which became much bigger and heavier and thus also became much more dangerous to launch. The space shuttle also became the most expensive way to launch even though it was developed to make things cheaper to launch, because it was reusable. It may have succeeded in one area which was the secret launching of satellites, but completely failed in the area of cost effectiveness. I think it was too dangerous to launch, but some say if you consider the amount of launches there were, it was pretty dependable.

There is no denying the fact we wouldn’t be where we are today in space if it wasn’t for NASA, but now that private companies are entering into space exploration, we may find things will move a lot faster and  be a lot cheaper.