Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 The Importance of the Moon
- Chapter 2 First Steps
- Chapter 3 Moon/Mars
- Chapter 4 An International Flotilla
- Chapter 5 The Moon Rises from the Ashes
- Chapter 6 Moons Past
- Chapter 7 The Pull of the Far Side
- Chapter 8 Water in a Land of False Seas
- Chapter 9 Inconstant Moon
- Chapter 10 Moonlighting
- Chapter 11 Lunar Living Room
- Chapter 12 Lunar Power
- Chapter 13 Stepping Stone
- Chapter 14 Return to Earth
- Glossary
- Appendix A Von Braun et al. Space and Lunar Exploration Issues
- Appendix B Topics in Transient Phenomena on the Moon
- Index
- References
Chapter 14 - Return to Earth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 The Importance of the Moon
- Chapter 2 First Steps
- Chapter 3 Moon/Mars
- Chapter 4 An International Flotilla
- Chapter 5 The Moon Rises from the Ashes
- Chapter 6 Moons Past
- Chapter 7 The Pull of the Far Side
- Chapter 8 Water in a Land of False Seas
- Chapter 9 Inconstant Moon
- Chapter 10 Moonlighting
- Chapter 11 Lunar Living Room
- Chapter 12 Lunar Power
- Chapter 13 Stepping Stone
- Chapter 14 Return to Earth
- Glossary
- Appendix A Von Braun et al. Space and Lunar Exploration Issues
- Appendix B Topics in Transient Phenomena on the Moon
- Index
- References
Summary
The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
– Carl Sagan, 1987I have written letters on odd pages of this book. Will you manage to get them sent? You see I am anxious for you and the boy’s future. Make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games. They encourage it at some schools.
– Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, near the end of his final letter to wife Kathleen Scott, March 28, 1912, a day before his death on the Ross Ice Shelf on returning from the South PoleBy necessity this book concerns not just next year or 10 years, but maybe the next 20 or 40. People yet unborn will fulfill (or forsake) these efforts and decisions. What will their world be like, and who will they be? For now we depend on others’ educated guesses. However, as we choose, space exploration can play important roles, in ways useful to current politics but also influencing youth central to realizing these and other dreams.
Exploration takes time, generations. It can inspire generations, one of the few strong motivations demonstrated to attract young people into science, engineering, and mathematics (over-succinctly acronymed as STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Modern economies, especially America’s, require vital influx of inspired scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. These workers and innovators maintain the main seminal foundation of America’s economic production (besides its agricultural base). Innovative products (and food) are what America creates from scratch that people in other nations want to buy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New MoonWater, Exploration, and Future Habitation, pp. 432 - 462Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014