“A compelling appeal, at just the right time, for continuing to look up.”—Air & Space America’s space program is at a turning point. After decades of global primacy, NASA has ended the space-shuttle program, cutting off its access to space. No astronauts will be launched in an American craft, from American soil, until the 2020s, and NASA may soon find itself eclipsed by other countries’ space programs. With his signature wit and thought-provoking insights, Neil deGrasse Tyson—one of our foremost thinkers on all things space—illuminates the past, present, and future of space exploration and brilliantly reminds us why NASA matters now as much as ever. As Tyson reveals, exploring the space frontier can profoundly enrich many aspects of our daily lives, from education systems and the economy to national security and morale. For America to maintain its status as a global leader and a technological innovator, he explains, we must regain our enthusiasm and curiosity about what lies beyond our world. Provocative, humorous, and wonderfully readable, Space Chronicles represents the best of Tyson’s recent commentary, including a must-read prologue on NASA and partisan politics. Reflecting on topics that range from scientific literacy to space-travel missteps, Tyson gives us an urgent, clear-eyed, and ultimately inspiring vision for the future.

Star Trek was right — there is only one final frontier, and that is space... Human beings are natural explorers, and nowhere is this frontier spirit stronger than in the United States of America. It almost defines the character of the US. But the Earth is running out of frontiers fast. In Brian Clegg's The Final Frontier we discover the massive challenges that face explorers, both human and robotic, to uncover the current and future technologies that could take us out into the galaxy and take a voyage of discovery where no one has gone before... but one day someone will. In 2003, General Wesley Clark set the nation a challenge to produce the technology that would enable new pioneers to explore the galaxy. That challenge is tough — the greatest we've ever faced. But taking on the final frontier does not have to be a fantasy. In a time of recession, escapism is always popular — and what greater escape from the everyday can there be than the chance of leaving Earth's bounds and exploring the universe? With a rich popular culture heritage in science fiction movies, books and TV shows, this is a subject that entertains and informs in equal measure.

A black teenager in the ‘70s-era Bronx was fascinated by space and frequently took his telescope up to the rooftop. But his neighbors were frightened, thinking he was an armed burglar. They called the police. In the mid-1990s, this same person was named Director of the American Museum of Natural History’s world-renowned Hayden Planetarium. This enthralling biography of Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s favorite astrophysicist, takes the reader from the hardscrabble streets of the inner city to the hallowed halls of science to the outer reaches of our galaxy and beyond. As this inspiring volume attests, Tyson’s life beautifully illustrates the maxim “through adversity to the stars.”

Humans have always wondered about the nature of the universe outside the tangible reaches of Earth. Not until the twentieth century could space be explored in earnest, as advances in rocket, computer, and optical technologies made crewed travel outside the atmosphere possible. Yet even after humans walked on the moon, space continues to hold many secrets that can enrich our understanding of the universe we live in. Author Richard Brownell offers a compelling account of space exploration as it has evolved and sharpened its focus. Chapters discuss the evolution of astronomy, early attempts at manned flight, the race between the Soviet Union and the United States to land on the moon, the advances in science yielding from space exploration that have changed life on Earth, and the future of space exploration as space programs contract and budgets tighten.

The Space Race was a rivalry of the twentieth century between two great Super Powers in the Cold War, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA), aimed at achieving the highest positions in space flight capabilities. It derives from the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race that followed the Second World War. The technological advantage needed to quickly achieve milestones in space flight was considered essential for national security and combined with the symbolism and ideology to time. The Space Race led to pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes to the Moon, Venus and Mars, and human space flights in low Earth orbit and the Moon.

Although its roots lie in early rocket technologies and the international tensions that followed World War II, the space race began after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. The space race became an important part of the cultural and technological rivalry between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War. Modern space exploration is reaching unbelievable areas. Mars is the focal point of space exploration. In the long term, there are tentative plans for manned orbital and landing missions to the Moon and Mars, establishing scientific outposts that will then give way to permanent and self-sufficient settlements. Additional exploration will potentially involve expeditions and settlements on other planets and their moons, as well as the establishment of mining and fueling outposts, particularly in the asteroid belt. Physical exploration outside the solar system will be robotic in the foreseeable future.

Several project teams from NASA, ESA and other organizations have investigated the possibility of establishing a colony in orbit. They found that the Moon and near-Earth asteroids have enough materials available, that solar energy is readily available in large quantities. The advantages of this system are its proximity to the Earth and its lower escape velocity, which facilitates the exchange of goods and services.

The Atomic Space Age has been and continues to be an engine for future wealth creation. Humanity stands on the verge of becoming an interplanetary species. We know we are made of star-stuff precisely because many of the isotopes in our bodies originated in the death throes of dying suns. With the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, mankind was for the first time able to glimpse both our distant past and our possible future. As with the discovery of fire and agriculture thousands of years ago, wind power hundreds of years ago, and steam power and electricity in the nineteenth century, we must now learn to tame this powerful new force locked within the heart of the atom. Buckminster Fuller once observed that wealth is nothing more than energy compounded by ingenuity. Since (mass-)energy can never decrease, and ingenuity will only increase, there is no limit to the quantity of wealth that our species can and will create using nuclear space propulsion.

Asteroid mining is the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects. Based on known terrestrial reserves, and growing consumption in both developed and developing countries, key elements needed for modern industry and food production could be exhausted on Earth within 50 to 60 years. In response, it has been suggested that platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may be mined and sent to Earth for profit, used to build solar-power satellites and space habitats, and water processed from ice to refuel orbiting propellant depots. Looking beyond the Milky Way, there are at least 2 trillion other galaxies in the observable universe. Space colonization can roughly be said to be possible when the necessary methods of space colonization become cheap enough to meet the cumulative funds that have been gathered for the purpose, in addition to estimated profits from commercial use of space. Intergalactic travel would either have to involve voyages lasting millions of years, or a possible faster than light propulsion method based on speculative physics, such as the Alcubierre drive. There are, however, no scientific reasons for stating that intergalactic travel is impossible in principle. Uploaded human minds or AI may be transmitted to other galaxies in the hope some intelligence there would receive and activate them.

This book presents a collection of chapters, which address various contexts and challenges of the idea of human enhancement for the purposes of human space missions. The authors discuss pros and cons of mostly biological enhancement of human astronauts operating in hostile space environments, but also ethical and theological aspects are addressed. In contrast to the idea and program of human enhancement on Earth, human enhancement in space is considered a serious and necessary option. This book aims at scholars in the following fields: ethics and philosophy, space policy, public policy, as well as biologists and psychologists.