Next Step in Human Space Exploration

Taking consideration of all the time, effort, and immense amounts of money that has been poured into creating the International Space Station (ISS) discussed in Michael Benson’s Take it Somewhere Special, it is likely that the United States will take a bold step and collaborate with neighboring nations to formulate plans for more in depth space exploration. Although Benson states in his article that the ISS is currently going nowhere fast, new political administration may be the push that the nation needs in order to attempt more space discovery within the space station. One of the less discussed, but more important problems presented with the ISS’s lack of exploration is the problem that NASA, especially under the administration of George Bush, is not welcoming to new ideas and input from other countries. But with so many billions already having been poured into this project and a more welcoming political administration in charge, NASA may be more likely to collaborate with other nations and begin a “truly international endeavor, with expenses shared among all participating nations”, as the text states. The next direct step, however, will more than likely be working on formulating plans to explore. What Benson discusses throughout his entire article is how the ISS has been built and created for all of this discovery, but nothing has actually been done yet. Over the years, nations all over have tested space crafts and found that they have been successful. The ISS has the equipment to send space crafts into space and back safely, the only delay right now seems to be a lack of planning for ideas to actually explore.

Credibility of Sources

For my third essay I plan on using a multitude of sources to work from. One of my largest sources is Google Scholar, which I plan on taking submitted articles from and incorporating into my essay by using examples of definitions for torture. I plan on using the information that the site gives me to formulate a strong argumentative paper and thus create my own solid definition by the examples I am given. Some examples on the site that I have found thus far are that torture is defined as “intentional affliction of severe physical suffering” pulled from a book titled Terrorism and Counter Terrorism by Seumas Miller or that torture is “a violation of human rights in general” pulled from an article called The Definition of Torture in International Law by Barry Klayman. These sources are both very credible being that they are both from reliable websites and each author has citations of where he gathered his information. Another big source I intend to use is the class textbook. In the book is a valuable section of chapter 9 dedicated to helping people better formulate definitional arguments and examples from various texts that one can use. The book is credited and all the texts are cited and written by published authors. I also plan on heading to the library and finding some online reserves and books focused on torture. Being that our university library has these sources I know that they are credible and they all have references that can be looked into to find out where information originally came from.

Torture

For my third paper, I am considering writing about the definition of torture. In several sources the term is defined in different ways. Ranging from some sources claiming it to be “immense feelings of pain or acute mental or physical pain” to a medical definition that states that it is “severe pain that is intentionally inflicted on a person to obtain information for any reason based on discrimination of any kind (WordNetWeb, MedicineNet). Because the definitions are different in every source, I know that there would be some debate on what exactly is considered torture. For my paper I want to explore what exactly could be considered torture and what may not be considered based on different definitions provided. I feel like torture is a clear issue of definition because there have been several cases that have come up with the treatment of humans and animals where some claim that certain behaviors are torturous, where as others deem it simply as deserved punishment. I plan to research different documents that will support my claim about certain behaviors being torturous. By using the various definitions I have found I will formulate my own definition and use it throughout my paper to help my reader to grasp the point I am trying to make. Based off of the issues that come up relating to my topic, I will use all the definitions that I find to make truthful statements about whether certain behaviors should be considered torturous or not. I will use evidence throughout to effectively support my claim with each definition.