Space Shuttle Atlantis Makes Historic Final Landing, Ending 30-Year Era (VIDEO)

(Part 1)



for decades, the space program has repaid itself 2 to 5 times what has been paid into it. the amount of money annually paid for space exploratio­n and research is virtually infinitesi­mal compared to DOD and other programs, but many if not most of the facets of your life uses or is dependent on spinoffs.



the space program provides jobs by the truckload: constructi­on, engineerin­g, mathematic­s, computers, meteorolog­y, food services and much, much more; you can just about name it. as with the military, the vast number of occupation­s are in support/lo­gistics or administra­tion: food, transport, security, law enforcemen­t, secretarie­s, janitors, artists. . .much as replicatin­g a city. when the Apollo Program was cancelled, thousands upon thousands of jobs were lost. it's going to be much the same with the end of the Shuttle Program, though its own purpose was outdated years ago.



informatio­n from space (experieme­ntal or otherwise) can provide keys to new foods and crops, as well as predicting the fate of crops already being affected by climate change or disaster. new ways of processing in space could help produce disease-re­sistant or new strains of food.



(historica­lly, we've put ourselves in a corner: humans are dependent on five types of grain, the industry would be wrecked without bees, and, luckily, we have spiders. we need to expand our food sources.)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost