Exploration comparison

This week, I would like to use space exploration in comparison to the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. I was writing an assignment on space rockets for my Business class and this idea came to my mind.

We have been sending astronauts to space since the 1960s. The reason for that is to explore the unknowns in space, study it and see if there are resources out there to be obtained, maybe even colonize. Currently, the earth’s population is at 7 billion people and it is only going to keep increasing. We have explored the entire planet and that led me to think of the overpopulation in Europe during the colonial period where there is no more room to grow. At the time, people thought that the earth was square and if they sail far enough, they would fall off the edge of the world. Columbus proved it wrong with the discovery of the New World. His discovery was the same as when we learned of the planets in our solar system, from Mercury to Pluto.

We are still at the infancy of our space exploration just like Columbus just landed in the New World. We have managed to put humans on the moon and started sending robots to probe Mars because it has conditions that seem right for liquid water, or even life. It took about 200 years since Columbus’ discovery before the Colonial period began. Space is the final frontier for us just as the New World was the final frontier on Earth.