Burlington High School
Burlington, Kansas
Teacher: Devra Parker
Success In Space And Everyday Life
By Aaron Scherffius
12th grade
On October 4, 1957, the former Soviet Union launched the world’s first ever satellite in to space called Sputnik. The space race was on and people were proud to be Americans. American scientist strived to beat the Russians in space exploration by going to the moon. The United States succeeded on July 21, 1969, when Lance Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to ever walk on the moon. Yet, since then little has happened in space exploration but disasters. In the art of space discovery, has America abandoned excellence?
Any success that America has had in space travel is dated, and it’s clear that the United States isn’t processing mush. Has NASA, the world leader in space exploration, abandoned striving for success? NASA’s pre crafts, the Space Shuttles, are well over do for an overhaul, because the youngest is more than 20 years old. NASA’s plan to save money by using old ships has severely damaged their creditability. Two of the five shuttles have exploded before even leaving the atmosphere, and no research has been done to produce a new design. I think that we have abandoned excellence. The only way we make headline news in when something goes wrong.
Space isn’t the only area in America’s large industry where quality is sparse. A good example would be the automotive industry, particularly American cars. Polls and experiments all over the US bad mouth our cars when it comes to reliability. So many people hate to admit that the birth place of the modern car has taken a back seat to foreign car plants. The majority of the leading automobile makers are the Japanese, which may maybe because of their life style. In Japan, kids are taught at a young age to do the best they can in their life and never lose face. This often relates to hours upon hours of homework every night to keep that A+. Japanese colleges are very difficult to get into, and when teens don’t, they may kill themselves, thinking that they have disgraced their family. America’s teens seem to be perfectly happy living off mom and dad while they work at Burger King.
Thankfully, NASA’s poor doesn’t affect the whole US, but it did start a new race for space. A couple years ago a competition started for the first privately funded craft to reach the outer edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was called the X-prize and a team on October 4, 2004 claimed the award. The craft’s name was Space Ship One and it was created by Burt Rutan. He is no stranger to aviation and has hundreds of flying crafts that he has built over the years. Though, he didn’t become famous until 1986, when he made an airplane called Voyager. His brother flew it around the world in only nine days, but that wasn’t nearly as important as most his most recent achievement. This shows that people in America can do anything when they put their mind to it and keep trying to be the best.
In my own life I have always been excited about Space Exploration and flying; that’s what got me interested into getting my private pilot’s license. I feel that success has left thousands of Americans’ minds, leaving them to give up way too early in life. It may be because there are no major heroes in today’s world or any wide scaled rivalry like the space race. The whole United States participated in the competition against the Russians to explore the last and greatest frontier. Children looking up to astronauts gained inspiration and a dream of being great. The only way to do that was to do well in school and never settle for second best. This was great until the race was over and our bitter rivalry ended with the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, NASA has failed missions to Mars with their flagship Hubble, which is going to be replaced. So NASA kills the one good program they have and continue to fund failed journeys to Mars.
In my life or I should say school life, I not perfect. I don’t usually get straight A’s, but I don’t settle for just the average. One could say that I don’t strive for excellence, but a year ago, I took a Kansas math and science state-wide test. I scored in the excellence range for math and was only one percent off the same for science. So, this shows that I try to balance a good social life with a good school record.
Has America abandoned excellence? I
think in a way we have, but that is only because people are realizing that
what matters is if they’re happy. NASA, on the other hand has no excuse, but
it will never die out. They simply pave the way for smaller companies to do
the fine work and look like heroes.
No Answers To Questions Re: Required Reading
Disqualified For Prizes