After watching the “Living in the Universe” and “Sex in
Space” episodes I do believe that the space program should be held accountable
to the public’s opinion. There is so many questions that come to my mind but
one main question was that what makes the people of the space program think
that other people actually want to live on another planet? In the “Living in
the Universe” documentary, the speakers made statements such as, “relentless
battle”, and “a constant struggle” to be able to live a life on Mars. Other
speakers have also noted things like, “life on Mars is very stressful, foreign,
and claustrophobic”. My question is simply, who would want to change their life
here on Earth for something so chaotic and difficult? Having the technology and
knowledge to be able to live on another planet is something that is so
magnificent to know but, for me, only if it were my only option to live.
After
watching the “Sex in Space” documentary, my opinion that the space programs
needs to be held accountable to the public opinion only grew stronger. I
understand that it would be so great for our country to be able to have this
knowledge, not only being able to live in space but also able to reproduce,
however this is a topic that is extremely risky for people’s lives. When
experimenting with this risky topic, the space program used rats to act as how
humans would reproduce. The fact that they use rats in the experiment makes me
mad because I do not completely agree with using animals as experiments even
though they may not be harmed. During this experiment, the space program has
noticed that when they flew a male rat in space and after the flight reproduced,
the baby rat was birthed with many problems. Problems such as kidney issues, or
abnormal behaviors, and even growth retardation occurred in these baby rats.
This experiment brings up another question to my mind; who would really want to
chance testing this experiment on their own child? If all of these issues could
happen while rats reproduce, I can’t even imagine what could happen to humans
if they should reproduce. I know I would not want that burden that, I
willingly, was the cause for my child having problems growing up. I believe
that the space program needs to be open to the public’s opinion because I would
not want to take the chance to harm my family or myself just because the space
program has a dream of living on two planets.
I completely agree with your reasons, but I'm not sure if the public's opinion will support these reasons. Not everyone has a college education and the intelligence and morals to know that using rats as bait is wrong and how dangerous reproducing in space can be. People like the man who thought of the space cruise arent the type of people I want influencing NASA's opinion.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you though, when you said not everyone has these dreams of living on another planet! I sure wouldnt want to! I like my live on Earth and would not want to battle every day just to survive that is so not appealing to me! And I would never experiment with reproduction if it could cause harm to either animals or human! Knowing putting babies in danger is wrong!
Michelle, I agree completely with this post. I understand how incredible it would be to have the knowledge and the ability to reproduce in space, but I do not understand who would want to put their family through such an experiment with the possibility of their child having a birth defect. I understand that these effects happen even on Earth, but the probability of it happening in space is so much higher and I do not understand why anybody would want to go through that. I also agree with you about not everybody wanting to live on another planet. We are not even close to having the proper kind of knowledge to take on this role or to move to another part of the universe. The amount of money that goes in to testing could be used on things that are happening in the real world, every day, to every day people. I liked this post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post. I would not want to try and live on a planet where every moment it seems would be a struggle to survive. Life on Mars would seem very stressful and there would never me a moment of peace and calm. Do we really want to struggle every day to survive just to see tomorrow? Why not spend the money on Earth and ensure that survives with us.
ReplyDeleteI would not want to be the first person to try and reproduce in space either. As you said, look at all the damage that happened to the rats. Can you imagine what may happen to an innocent baby? There is no way I would want my tax dollars help fund a project that would harm a baby.
I could not agree more with your article! Why risk it all on a different planet that is so foreign to our bodies? I think that it is already difficult enough for children on earth to refrain from different abnormalities, being on Mars would have worse affects. If it affects animals, of course it will affect humans. I think that using taxpayers dollars for this experiment is useless. I think that it is a terrible decision because if two people are going to space to create life then why create life at risk. The point of reproducing is to have healthy children.. I really liked your article and I also do not agree with testing on animals that also made me very upset.
ReplyDeletei agree with your ideas on this question, but i don't think that the space programmed should be held accountable for the public opinion. not everyone would present a logic reason for not exploring the studies. like you mention, is so truth that not everyone would like to live in space. so if you have to consider public opinion in this case their would be more opinion that would favor the studies and others that wont. another thing that i found confusing in your post was that you were mad about experimenting on rats. i rather them experimenting on rats than a real human. i wont want my child or anyone child to be the first to be used.
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