Blog Post #2: "When We Left Earth" NASA Documentary and Space Travel

"When We Left Earth", a NASA documentary produced by the Discovery Channel, was a compelling series of episodes over American space travel and how we pioneered one of the final frontiers- space. Consisting of 6 episodes, "When We Left Earth" documented everything from the first Mercury missions on through the Gemini and Apollo programs, the construction and launch of the space shuttle, as well as the upbringing of the Hubble Telescope, SkyLab, and International Space Station. The series was created in part with NASA to help celebrate the agency's 50th anniversary (in 2008). The series, in my opinion, was very instilling and entertaining. I have had the pleasure to meet some of these astronauts in person thanks to my father and wished I had been old enough to realize just how special these men and women are/were. This documentary series was inspiring and just absolutely awesome. I never really wondered about space or thought about how it would be to go up there. Now I do, I would love to go into space, into the unknown. Space is an awesome place, it's the final frontier- and we should pioneer it. Especially at the rate that we are destroying the Earth, we may need it in the not so distant future.

Summary of Project: The Birth of Our Solar System

Our Solar System was born approximately about 4.5 billion years ago from a huge cloud of space dust and gasses. The very center of our solar system, the sun, was created by a nebula. A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. A shock-wave of some sort, triggered the cloud of dust and gas to start binding together, eventually forming a star. But not all of the dust from the nebula turned into our sun. Some formed the planets by swirling around into a spherical shape. Electrostatic forces or carbon coatings caused them to stick to one another and build up on each other. Mutual gravity eventually brought them together into the formation of a planet. Dust and some gasses primarily made up the terrestrial planets, while primarily gasses made up the Jovian planets. But our solar system won't last forever. The sun, being a star, will eventually evolve into other forms of stars as their "life cycle" goes on. Eventually the sun will become so large that it will essentially set the entire Earth on fire and then consume it. But that's won't happen for a few billion years, so we don't have much to worry about. Everything in the solar system, including us, was created from some space dust. Isn't that remarkable? Our entire planet, all of the living organisms, and several other planets were created out of nothing but dust floating around in space that had been disturbed.