“Space: The final frontier.” Quoted from the famous Star Trek series. This quote is the very principal of what space really is. Space, what is space? Well, the definition of space is: a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied. But this definition is contradictory to what we call our universe. Our universe is a vast area, ever expanding, full of stars, galaxies, planets, and even black holes. Just picture this, where we are today, Earth, in our solar system, we are able to view at least one hundred billion galaxies. That is a pretty big number, but remember, one hundred billion galaxies in our observable universe that means that there could be even more galaxies then we could possible imagine. Stars make up galaxies, which makes hundreds of millions of billions of the universe.

What then, do we really know about the universe? Well it is scientifically proven that the universe is expanding. This discovery is very recent too, in the last eighty years is when we discovered it. This discovery was found by Edwin Hubble. We are learning knew things everyday and we even have scientists onboard the International Space Station to study the effects of the “zero gravity” effect. The “zero gravity” effect is the weightlessness you feel when you are in space. The name zero gravity is incorrect though we call it zero gravity because it feels like there isn’t any gravity but there is. There is always a slight pull towards everything in space, right now you and I are being pulled toward everything around us, but things with larger masses have more gravity than things that are small, but if you get far enough away from the object the gravity is not as strong, otherwise known as zero gravity. The International Space Station (ISS) is orbiting Earth at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour! This means the ISS sees a sunrise once ever 92 minutes! How cool is that?

Space Exploration, this is quite the topic. Many people speculate that will we will be able to explore space more frequently now that we have more technology on our hands however the only problem is that the method used to explore space as of right now is very difficult, as most the fuel from the rocket is used to get out of our atmosphere. Using the ISS or other space stations as a docking port has also been thought of but the demand of fuel needed to be sent up into space would cost lots of money. If we could think of a more reliable fuel source we might be able to explore out of our solar system. Many theories of worm holes have been thought about. A wormhole is a gap in space-time, in which if you were to travel down though the wormhole you would be in a different area in space. We have yet to discover a worm hole but theorists believe that they are entirely possible. Another theory to be able to travel in space much faster than the speed of light would be able to bend space time. This is the idea of warping the area around your spacecraft to project it forward, which is another entirely possible theory but we have no idea how it would be accomplished.

As of right now I believe that our main goal for outer space should be to first find a more reliable fuel source for our probes and ships. The sooner we are able to accomplish the speed of light, the sooner we are able to study new and interesting galaxies and planets, but in the meantime, farewell.