Alexander Plaza
9/28/16
AP Biology
Mr.Ippolito D Block Even
Chang, Kenneth. "Elon Musk’s Plan: Get Humans to Mars, and Beyond." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Sept. 2016. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.
The article I reviewed is about the recent announcement made by Elon Musk, billionaire founder of SpaceX rocket company, at the International Astronautical Congress.According to the article, Elon Musk provided engineering details, timelines, and a video representation of a spaceflight to Mars. Musk estimates that the rocket will cost $10 billion to develop and he generously estimates that the passengers will be able to fly to Mars by 2024. Musk’s goal is to create a self-sustaining civilization on Mar and his ultimate goal is to make the human species a multiplanetary species in order to keep the human race alive even after cataclysmic events on earth, such as an asteroid strike. A former NASA official, Scott Pace, commented on Musk’s plans saying that it was “Possible, but not probable” to reach Mars. Pace highlighted that Musk did not explain why governments, corporations or other organizations would fund the effort.” The article goes on to talk about the competition Musk is receiving from the rocket company Blue Origin owned by another billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos has his own vision of having millions of people live in space. The article also talks about NASA’s own ambitions with Mars explaining that NASA has their own plans for crewed Mars mission around 2030.
Musk is providing very exciting news. It is possible that within our generation, a human will be able to travel to and step on the face of Mars. The development of the rocket provides the possibility of greater space exploration putting the other planets and moons in our solar system within our reach. The most important factor is the possibility of making the human species a multiplanetary species. The Earth's resources will not be able to support us forever. Making the human species a multiplanetary species will definitely aid in increasing the longevity of the human race as it will be able to withstand cataclysmic events on Earth. Although this development will not directly affect our lives today, it will most likely affect future generations.
Overall I thought this article was very informative and well-rounded. The article includes accurate information on the goals of Elon Musk as well as explores different points of view by including information on what other companies are doing such as Blue Origin and NASA. However, the article does not examine the space flight in detail. The article does provide a video of what the stages of the space flight might look like but it would be helpful to describe a summary of the details and timeline within the flight to Mars within the article. This would shift the focus from the business aspect of the Mars flight to the scientific aspect. Nonetheless, this article does a fine job at informing me on the future of spaceflight to Mars.
Connor Barrett
ReplyDelete9/28/16
Current Event
AP Bio
Chang, Kenneth. "Elon Musk’s Plan: Get Humans to Mars, and Beyond." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Sept. 2016. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/science/elon-musk-spacex-mars-exploration.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
I chose to read Kenneth’s review of "Elon Musk’s Plan: Get Humans to Mars, and Beyond" because I have read about Elon Musk before and find both him and the companies that he runs to be very interesting. There were several things that I found were well done by the review. The first is the summary of the article, which gave a comprehensive overview of the article. The second was the analysis of how the article could have focused more on the scientific aspects of the mission instead of the business side. The third was the analysis of the importance of the topic of space travel in general. There are also two places I could see improvement being warranted. First with small spelling and grammar fixes and second with more in depth summary. Reading this review was very informative because I learned about Jeff Bezos’ company, which I had not known about and NASA’s own plans to go to Mars. Space travel is a very important part of humanity’s scientific future and this article and review covers the next steps of it.
Throughout Alex Plaza’s current event, there were many aspects that contributed to his passages. The summary provided of the article was succinct and informative which allowed the reader to get a good understanding of the topic of the article. Alex described how the article was mainly about the goal to get humans on Mars and to eventually be able to have human life there. A second aspect that was good was Alex’s use of facts. Alex says that, “Musk estimates that the rocket will cost $10 billion to develop.” By using a statistic, the topic is brought into terms that the reader is familiar with and so they can get a general idea of the expenses for this project. A third aspect of Alex’s writing that I enjoyed was his description of how this current event will affect us as a society. Alex connects the idea that exploring Mars may allow humans to eventually live there since the resources on earth will eventually run out and in case of a catastrophic event. Also, the research that will go into this project on rockets will be beneficial when scientists attempt to explore other parts of our solar system and it will advance our space technology.
ReplyDeleteAlex could have improved his response in several ways. For example, there was a lack of quotes pulled from the article which led to the reader not being able to hear the author’s tone and also caused for no expert opinions to be implemented. Integrating quotes from the original article makes the response more intriguing and adds credibility and information. A second aspect that did not benefit Alex’s writing was his over summarization. There were few to no transition sentences and very little analysis of the information provided. This made the response boring to read and it did not flow smoothly. Especially in the first paragraph it was as if he was regurgitating information from the article and nothing else.
From reading Alex’s response, I learned that NASA has plans in the near future to further explore Mars with the possibility of sending humans there. Recently I have not heard much about our space intentions, so it was interesting to hear that many people are attempting to get humans up to Mars. I expect this to be a major topic throughout the next couple generations since humans are yet to land on Mars.
Chang, Kenneth. "Elon Musk’s Plan: Get Humans to Mars, and Beyond." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Sept. 2016. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/science/elon-musk-spacex-mars-exploration.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
I chose to comment on Alex’s review of Elon musk's plan. While reading his review I noticed three things that he did very well. The first thing was that his summary was very clear and concise which was nice. The second thing was that he gave a very good analysis of what Elon Musk's goals were. The third reason I liked this article was that he explained why Elon Musk decided to pursue such an important project. Although there was a lot of good in this article there was also some bad. The first thing that needed improvement were some minor grammatical errors, this would have made his review easier to read. The last thing that needed improvement was more details and facts, integrating quotes in would have helped a lot. Overall, I learned a lot about how ambitious people are about space travels and it spurred me to read some more articles about the topic.