There has been an argument going on that polarized many people of different opinions: Is space exploration worth the money? Humanity as a whole is still dealing a lot more essential problems already. We still couldn’t achieve world peace, fully eradicate hunger and poverty, equality for everyone, reduction of climate change, no-scarcity world and etc. The International Space Station cost 150 billion dollars to make. It’s better to cut the funding of space exploration to invest solving these problems, or is it?
What most people don’t actually get is that space exploration is a lot cheaper than what it seems. Sure, it might cost a lot whenever you are talking about individual budgets, however we should change our perspective to a country-based perspective. In USA, which is the country that is most involved in funding space exploration, the budget given to NASA is just about 0.48% of the USA’s total budget of spending in 2020, which is about 22.6 billion dollars. And in other countries, it is a lot less compared to USA. So in reality, while space exploration might sound expensive, it’s a lot cheaper than what people normally think. Another point I would like to focus on is that space exploration is that space exploration positively effect economies of countries. It creates new job oppurtinities, increases foreign or internal investments, enhances technological advancements and boosting other fields such as healthcare, agriculture and transportation. These achievements could also directly or indirectly influence on reducing the common world problems. Some researches done to create habitable enviroment in Mars could advance our knowledge about agriculture on deserted areas of the Earth. Many technologies such as MRI or GPS were discovered thanks to space research. Cardiac pumps were achieved thanks to space exploration researchs. Space exploration is also promising for the solutions for common world problems, so it should be accounted as a useful tool. And we better do that, cause it seems there is no other choice. Now, it might seem cliche and methaphorical, but dinosaurs did not die because they faced inequality, they died because they did not have the technology to protect themselves from extinction. While humans are not same as dinosaurs and have social interractions where inequality is a big obstacle, you got what I meant by that. Space is full of risks. An unexpected Gamma Ray Burst or some other phenomenon we don’t know about could be on it’s way to the Earth, and we should be cautious about protecting ourself by investing on space exploration. It also seems that space exploration is our future. Whenever we are investing on it, we are making stuff easier for our future.
So basically, space exploration is a lot cheaper than what people think. It can create useful positive effects on economies, could enhance technology and other fields. It can provide solutions to common world problems. We should continue our investments for space exploration to protect mankind from threats of the cosmos. And space exploration seems to be our future, so we better get used to it.
