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Remember the moon landing? Of course you don't, but no one who watched it on television would have guessed that the last moon walk would be in 1972. Now some of us are ready to 'Occupy Mars'. This First-Year Seminar will explore the Space Age from the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957 to the International Space Station, including military and civilian programs, unmanned and manned missions, and new competitors in our current space race, such as China, India, and the European Space Agency. We will read contemporary and historical accounts (October Sky and The Right Stuff) and screen some classic space age feature films and documentaries. We will pay particular attention to Johns Hopkins University's contributions, notably the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes and the Applied Physics Laboratory's satellite program. We'll talk with experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute and APL, and tour the National Air and Space Museum collections with the curator of manned spaceflight. In groups, students will prepare future space mission proposals for NASA and SpaceX, and present them to a distinguished panel of Hopkins space scientists and engineers.