Moonshots For The 21st Century Essay

In the documentary “Moonshots for the 21st Century” by Fareed Zakaria, he describes “5 moonshots” which all have a promising future to potentially positively impact our economy, political and social norms. The “Moonshot” title refers to the statement by then US President John F. Kennedy in 1962: “…. we choose to go to the moon …by the end of this decade” (Rice University speech, September 12, 1962). This speech by an American president indicated a national resolve to reach a difficult and shared goal. And that goal was reached in 1969 – before the end of the decade as JFK promised. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap, but it was a success and in many ways we are still reaping the benefits of the scientific and engineering breakthroughs it

It will be an enormous energy resource powered by virtually inexhaustible hydrogen from ocean water. I think this is the most promising for the future because eventually, we are going to run out of resources on earth and we need to begin now to figure out an alternate source before we have none left. There are many social, economic and political gains and consequences on the line here. The cost will be astronomical, which is why sharing that cost among the nations of the world is essential. No one country could carry it alone. There are huge forces involved in controlled fusion, and there is certainly a danger of a mishap, however, unlike the fission reactions that power today’s nuclear power plants, there is very little radioactivity or danger of meltdown involved. But I thing the biggest “danger” involved is due to the need for close international cooperation. Any project like this requires extremely tight coordination of efforts. Each nation must do its part exactly per the overall plan Political rivalries and struggles to “control” the effort could easily result in a breakdown of the management structure of the project. If this goes wrong, many countries will have lost billions of dollars. Another reason why this is risky is because every move the project makes requires talk to the committee of a representative from every country involved to agree on a next