Space Exploration: Is It Worth The Cost?

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.