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Astronomy

Space.

Why exploring space when we have so many problems on land (e.g. Is NASA a waste of money?)? What if our ancestors asked why farming when we struggle to hunt? Why sailing when we have some many problems on land? Why making planes when ship still sinks? Because exploring new grounds often bring inspiration to existing problems. A number of inventions like phone cameras wouldn't exist without space exploration programs. Majority of funding in space programs also goes to the people behind the missions, some of the most skilled people in the world. They are not just wasted and burnt.

For me, another important thing is just to figure out who we are, where we from, where are we, and where will we be?

  • Hubble Deep Field: A 10 days exposure of the darkest patch of the sky reveal 3000 previously unknown young galaxies. Each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars. While we, are living in the solar system where the sun is just one of the many stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

  • Pale Blue Dot: Voyager 1 turning the camera around and taking a picture of Earth before leaving the Solar System. The earth is just a pixel in the vast cosmos.

    From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    Carl Sagan

Related pages:

Resources​

Telescopes for stargazing (if binoculars aren't enough):

Sites​

News:

  • The Orbital Index — weekly newsletter highlighting space exploration news
  • Everyday Astronaut — articles and videos about the space industry, which include pre-launch previews and post-launch reviews

YouTube:

ISS