Why are Wasting Money on Space?

Beauty and wonder are lost on some.

Why spend billions on space research when there are hungry people on Earth?

Perspective Time: NASA gets seven billion dollars annually. Americans spend one hundred and fifty-four billion a year on alcohol.

The Space Program is only one half of one percent of the budget. It’s also one of the few investments that pays back. For every dollar spent on Space Program research, it gives back eight dollars to the economy. All the money from the patents owned by NASA go directly into the US economy. Can we afford to give this up?

We went to a desert and didn't kill anyone. That's noble.

I could also rephrase the question: Why do you feel you need to spend money on luxuries when you know you could help people? It’s more apt to say “Why would you spend money to further your own education if you could just give your tuition money to the poor?” It’s an investment. Learning and exploring is always worth it; it just happens that the Space Program is paying back wonderfully on paper, too.

I’m glad that it is paying back, because people don’t understand the true value of exploration. If there is a population greater than 1, we can assume there will always be problems that affect people. If we believed we could cure the problems by staying put and learning nothing, fine.

That’s nowhere near the case.

Have humans done anything worthwhile without exploring?

Two things motivate human learning and progress: exploration and war. As a race, the need to advance, to become more, is absolute and I would much rather have my money go to exploration. I’d rather learn the beauty of a distant nebula when viewed in different wavelengths, than spend hundreds of times more to learn that 2000 more Americans died in the Middle East last month.








Space program research had led to:

• Miniaturization and mass-production of electronics. We’d still have clunky black and white TV’s and room-sized computers that do little more than a calculator without the Space Program.
• Health. We have more accurate and affordable ways of detecting and treating breast cancer. We all know a breast cancer survivor, even if we don’t know we do. Thanks, Space Program! We also have the artificial hearts.
• Ball-point pens. Wouldn’t you love to have to carry around an inkwell?
• Food. TONS of benefits in growing food and making it healthier. When the USDA adopted measures learned from the Space Program, salmonella dropped two-fold. We can now produce much more food with the same or fewer resources. There’s your hunger argument right there.
• GPS has and will continue to save lives, allowing first-responders immediate location details.
• Heroes that don’t wage wars, or shoot one another. Not only that, but we go the extra mile to cooperate internationally and foster good will. Children have hope that they can do something big. To make a difference without being a warmonger or Hollywood piece of fluff.
• Why Mars? The technology developed for examining the surface of Mars has been turned on documents charred in the eruption of Mount Freakin’ Vesuvius. There is text being read that was destroyed 2000 years ago.

There has always been the need to explore. What makes us “intelligent”, in human terms, is our ability to question. “Why are we here?” and “Are we alone?” are big ones. If you don’t believe me, look at how well churches are doing.

We need to explore, to learn, to challenge ourselves, and rise to those challenges. It’s in our nature. We would never survive as a species if we didn’t push our limits. Nor would we deserve to.