Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier is a 2012 anthology by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, covering his various writings relating to the history and futurity of NASA and space travel in general. The book is a collection of essays that Tyson has written and revised over the years. Along with essays, there are podcast and interview transcripts, magazine columns, and more from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, all of which discuss space and space travel. It is evident that each essay was selected carefully as they all relate back to one another.
The book begins with one of Tyson’s newer essays that concerns the politics of NASA, and how America is falling behind in the means of space travel. A quote from his first essay states, “Now, as our interest in science
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Often, it is said that a lot of these technological advances that were made by scientists at NASA would have eventually occurred anyway even if NASA did not exist. This however, cannot be known, but it is for sure that space requires a whole new level of discipline for technology, and without the ways of thinking that were required to make these inventions, they may have not been created Although space is very demanding and leaves little room for error, the rewards scientists have reaped from their inventions have been great. The actual areas in which NASA develops technology include healthcare and medicine, public safety, transportation, environmental resources, industrial productivity, computer technology, and agricultural resources (Dunbar).
Neil DeGrasse Tyson also realizes the importance of space when it comes to being able to create new inventions, as he states, “Not only innovations that come directly from solving the challenges of advancing a space frontier, but also the culture and society that arises from being a participant in that frontier. In other words, yes, of course you have to innovate to discover something tomorrow that you didn’t know today – some new idea has to arise, some new solution to a problem. Some new material has to be invented. Of course. That would go on, with direct reference to space