With the invention of the first telescopes, the mankind has always been thinking about living on another planet. This thought pushed us about going to the space and moon. However, it seems we are still not satisfied from these successes. With the very beginning of the cold war and the race to the space, mankind has done so many things that were thought to be impossible for thousands of years.
With the end of World War 2, the US and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) have started preparations for a protentional World War 3. However, after a while the arms race have left its place to the race to the space. In the race to the space, they have used some of the data that they have gathered from the arms race, especially the ballistic rocket technology.
Scientists tried to use these kinds of knowledge to create space rockets. The first attempt to the space came from the US scientists. The US had a space program called “The Pioneer Program” and the aim of this program was to send a simple small spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon. In 1959, one year after the preparations began, finally the Pioneer 4 was ready for being launched. But the Soviet Union have acted one week faster than the US and have sent a probe called Luna to the moon already. Despite this, the US have launched the Pioneer 4 one week later than the Luna Probe. However, they got a worse result than the Luna Probe.
Then the US and the Soviet Union have kept working until 1961. In 1961 the Soviet Union have acted faster again and accomplished the first successful attempt to the space with Yuri Gagarin, the first person to the space. After Yuri Gagarin, Soviet Union started working on a travel to the moon but they did not know that the US have been working on it already.
Until 1969 both sides have had many attempts to the moon but unfortunately none of the attempts were successful. In May 1969 the US have launched the Apollo 10 Module for another orbiting attempt to the moon. After Apollo 10 has succeeded its orbiting the moon mission, it has returned to the earth and the preparations for Apollo 11 has begun. In the July of the same year the preparations have finished and the time of the first successful landing attempt to the moon has come. Apollo 11’s mission was a first among all Apollo missions which was a flight to the surface of the moon. In the end, we have gone to space and to the moon.
These missions may be successful, but even these trials did not satisfy us. We wanted to do more and started searching about other planets that we can travel. It did not take so long because we have seen a planet which could be our new moon to travel, Mars. Mars was not just a simple planet compare to others in our solar system. Because it was the only planet that was suggested to have life signs on it, at least the old life signs.
After the spread of going to mars idea, people started to think about living in mars. For most of the people it was a great idea. Because since we are polluting our planet and giving un-repairable harms to it, in the future we may need a new planet in the future.
Going to the mars and creating a human colony in there is an idea which is being discussed for approximately 30 years. However, some people have changed their ideas from going to Mars to saving our own planet. They think that our planet is a unique one among most of the planets we know, because as far as we know it is the only planet that has life on it.
If we come to my opinion, as humanity we may have done so many researches on the space and the other planets, searched for a new world. But, while we still have one why are we running behind an almost unreachable home, instead of saving the one which we already have. I don’t mean we need to ignore what is up there, but maybe instead of trying to apply hard and risky future plans in the infinite space we could just save our one and only home.