Space Studies Board : Annual Report 2014

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Synopsis
Under the leadership of Jonathan Lunine and Mitch Daniels, the Committee on Human Spaceflight completed one of the most challenging studies undertaken by the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Exploration, a diverse committee of experts tackled not only the question, How should humans explore space?, but the even more challenging question, Why should humans explore space?

The committee identified a pair of enduring questions that motivate human spaceflight: How far from Earth can humans go? and What can humans discover and achieve when we get there? The committee then explored a range of rationales for human spaceflight ranging from the pragmatic (its economic, national security, scientific exploration, international relations, and technology impacts) to the aspirational—the notion that space is humanity’s future. While the committee did not identify a single rationale as the primary justification for space exploration and could not quantify the economic benefit of space exploration, it did conclude that a mix of rationales motivates space exploration.

Along with an examination of public and stakeholder attitudes about human exploration, the report evaluated three different pathways to illustrate the trade-offs among affordability, schedule, developmental risk, and the frequency of missions for different sequences of intermediate destinations. The pathways, all of which culminate in landing on the surface of Mars, include some combination of missions to asteroids, the Moon, and martian moons.

Copyright:
2014

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
82 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780309368056
Publisher:
The National Academies Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Space Studies Board
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Science, Technology
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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