|
To venture into out space, man first
of all has to develop an efficient means of travel. Despite the rockets and
space shuttles that man has now that can travel at many kilometers per
second, the speed is still very slow. It takes months just to reach Venus,
our next door planetary neighbor. To go to planets further away it would
take years. Interstellar travel is definitely out of the question now.
According to current science, there is a speed limit in the universe. This
limit is the speed of light which is an astounding
300,000 kilometers per second. Even at this speed it still takes about eight
minutes for light from the Sun to reach our planet. So at the snail-pace 10
kilometers per second of our rockets, it is obvious why our speed is grossly
inadequate. Even if we have the means of travel, we still have to know the
place we are going to. We have to know the conditions and thus devise steps
to handle any situation that may crop up. It is foolish just to go to, say,
a planet and land there. The space travelers will surely
perish if they do not know how to cope
with the conditions of the planets. Man is a creature evolved from the
Earth. Earth is his home and his body is made specially for living here.
Biologically then space travel presents man with a formidable challenge. At
the present stage of our space travel, man is restricted to orbiting the
Earth or landing on the moon. It is an established fact that the body
undergoes biological changes outside the Earth. An example is that the bones
lose their mass and man has to readjust to conditions on Earth when he
returns. This is only one problem that has to be resolved. What about those
that come up on long space journeys ? No one knows for sure. |
