I read the first chapter of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, titled “The Universe, Soonish.” Its suggested future technology is cheap space travel. He gives multiple ideas that could lead to a great expansion of Space travel being cheaper and more readily available for regular-people millionaires rather than “crazy, nerdy billionaires.” This relates to notions of oral history about the pursuit of Space travel in the past, and how we can utilize Space Travel to preserve life on Earth. In the past, and currently, there are Orbiters and Rovers floating about the great outer space to conduct research and search for a planet that could sustain human life. This chapter relates to that notion because it is speaking ideas to begin thinking about if/when we do find a planet with the ability to sustain life. How would we get there? With affordable space travel to send people to those planet(s). There wouldn’t be a point to finding a planet with the ability to sustain human life if we can’t afford to send many humans to outer space. The concept of being able to affordably send humans to other planets should become a reality in thought soon, with engineers brainstorming possibilities, all while other scientists and engineers focus on finding a planet that can sustain human life. The notions of oral history of space travel are about the Apollo missions and the Rovers on Mars exploring and discovering new things.

I think I will be interviewing my grandpa, John Miller, about the advancement of technology with each Apollo mission. I want to specifically talk to him about Apollo 13 and the memory he has of the moments of launch and the moments of concern when the

Apollo 13 of the Apollo Space Mission. In pursuit of the “Great Space Race.” Photo from NASA.

liquid oxygen tank began to leak. I want to know what the general public’s reaction was, what his reaction was, and the amount of interest he had for space travel. I would also like to bring up the failure of the Challenger Orbiter space mission that had blown up and plummeted to Earth 73 seconds after leaving the ground.  I want to know in what way the news immediately impacted the nation, if he watched the launch, and how it impacted the nation immediately following, as well as long term. My grandpa has a lot of interest and passion for space travel and technology as a whole. He was actually the person whom first nominated me for the NASA STEM Summer Camp, along with nominations from teachers the following years; I did end up receiving official invitations to the camp from NASA each year as it is an invitation-only private camp only open for the brightest young minds in the nation. Sadly, my passion for space travel doesn’t meet even half of that of my grandpa’s. I have the intelligence, but lack the passion to pursue STEM, yet alone space science/astronomical/aeronautical engineering. Enough talking about myself, I think it would bring a big smile to my grandpa’s face if I sparked interest about space travel and asked him some questions.