When man
took his first step on the moon, it was a great accomplishment. Why did they do
this? Because of the Space Race against Russia, the research, and the
accomplishment. Was this trip costing thousands of dollars, risking several
lives and all to go to a giant satellite made of rock floating around the
Earth? Scientists are still looking at the rocks they brought back from the
Moon, and it has advanced space research and knowledge of the moon. It has also
trained N.A.S.A with many different scenarios. Space exploration trains
thousands of people, opens up our eyes to the rest of the universe and unites
nations to work towards a common goal. Space is (so far) infinitely large and
is continuing to expand. But is it worth the cost, the lives and the risk of
several tons of resources?
It takes 2 years or so to become an
astronaut. Experiencing 0-gravity, too much gravity in a rocket simulator and
weightlessness is just a small part of training. It costs sweat, money, (maybe
vomit), and lots of hard work. However, with that, you get rewards that are
literally out of this world. Space is not only beautiful, but it gives
knowledge that you can get nowhere else. It helps the studies of plants, birds,
insects, and anything else that isn’t used to the environment. Also, limiting
space with bits of paper with a value ON EARTH is a tad ridiculous. On the
other hand, we should at least use the bits of paper while they’re still being
used to solve the problems on Earth. In fact, the money used to go to the moon
in the Space Race could have instead been used to form a contract to bond the
two sides together, or even to solve the problems on Earth. Also, finding
planets that could also support human life is not too helpful when we need to
solve problems on OUR planet before possibly completely destroying
another and plundering the resources like a virus (note the similarities). We
know that there is no life in our Solar System and all we’ve done so far is
send a giant laboratory into our exosphere and been to the moon 6 times. We’ve
also sent countless satellites that most of which are not being used anymore.
Hubble Space Telescope was a great idea because it stayed in orbit doing its
job, the only times they went up was for repairs or upgrades and it helped us
learn about our universe and how things work. As for going to planets? And
moons? Wouldn’t it take less resources and training to simply send robots in a
ship to anywhere, get the data/samples they need and head back to Earth? That
way they can at least send another if the ship crashes and explodes in a
non-fiery sort of way.
Restoring life on another planet
like Mars or the Moon is an idea that would literally jump start a planet’s
ecosystem. Trees could grow on Mars because it has a lot of carbon dioxide. It
would mean the planet would form its own ozone layer, block in heat so the
planet warms, melt any ice, loosen chemicals, bring together the “soil”, and
let bacteria survive on the landscape. Yes, it may take thousands of years,
tons of resources, a lot of money, a lot of effort, blood, sweat, tears, risking
human life, and genetically engineered plants. It isn’t worth it if we move
there and then plunder the resources just like Earth, or just make it another
tourist destination of the quite far future. We only just started working on
reforestation of the Sahara Desert, and so far we’re just testing a method. To
be brutally honest, we need to sort out our planet before gazing at the stars
and the rest of the universe. The items we make for the space trips like memory
pillows, weird blankets, and other things that are efficient is what we should
really be investigating. I would give more money to that as a congress-person
than exploring space.
As a part of
the planet, we should use what we get in the most efficient way possible.
Flying up beyond the exosphere and possibly never coming back is not the main
thing we should be focused on just yet. We need to sort out our problems here
on Earth before spreading them like a big disease. At the moment, we are not
prepared as a whole to race through space, going there 6 times or so before
leaving footprints in dirt, and a whole lot of other resources which (being on
our own with nothing being imported to our planet) we’ll probably never see
again. And maybe, one day, when our planet is sorted and there is no poverty,
war, famine, and weird systems which are slowly spiraling into collapsing, we
might gaze at the stars and finally have a great, true, perspective changing
reason to fly beyond the exosphere and explore the rest of the universe.
