Why spend money on Space exploration?

Some of the most expensive things that the U.S.A invested on were tools and structures for space exploration. Many people wonder why they invest so much money on just space exploration, when they can invest so much more on trying to end world hunger, or not to invest money to help cure cancer. Those two problems, we can’t live with much longer unless we find a solution, but we can live without investing to much money on space exploration. I mean, we can throw up a couple of space probes or satellites to see what’s going on, but not so consistently. Some of our space “tools” that we invested in, were made in several different country’s. In all, imagine having to give the money to just transport the huge space device piece by piece back to the US to get it put together! Even thought we have the amount of money needed for Space explorations, some of it might be wasted money, because of all the things that could go wrong while creating a satellite in Space, instead we could divide the money so that it helps people who actually need the help instead of spending it all on space.

I agree with the fact that space exploration can help us decrease the amount of pollution and population of the Earth if we find a way for humans to survive in space. I like the fact that scientists are trying to find out new information about space because it is convenient. If there is anyone to blame for all the destruction, it's us, not mother nature, so instead of trying to blame other things for our mistakes, we should try to solve them. Even thought space exploration can be expansive, I think it is necessary because if we don’t have it, we wont be able to explore the rest of our solar system, and people wouldn’t be able to live up in space.

My opinion on sending other humans on to other planets is that they should go but only if they are doing test to see if we can do anything on those planets, meaning earth based research. The only thing I disagree on is sending so many of us, up there, and then if one thing goes wrong, there all gone, and then what? We will send up a couple other lab rats to risk their lives for science? These kind of scientists don’t just come and go, they either come and stay, or never come.  Sending us up into space is only worth the money and time if we actually collect some data about a planet/moon/ etc. Since science is a designed for humans to explore, having humans on more planets equals more science.

            Even though it is currently cost A LOT to research about other planets. Why are we then sending humans into space? To learn about how people survive long term up in space? Or are we just sending them up there so they can experiment on other things? There are some advantages. Machines can only relay data, where as humans can do more, like feelings and opinion. For example from the ISS astronauts take photos, many of them do because they consider the scene to be beautiful, but a machine could not do this. Also humans can react and adapt to situations. If something goes wrong on a mission where only humans are on aboard, they can do a lot more than machines to fix the problem or situation they are in. For example on mars the spirit rover got stuck and cannot be contacted any more and NASA have officially given up. If the rover was not there alone, the humans could help the rover, even if that required using equipment for a purpose it wasn't designed for.

Unlike robots, we can make intellectual decisions, and not decisions that we were made to do. Now, you might be thinking, why not just send a couple of robots or machines to help them up in space, well, the reason for this is, the speed of light. It takes about 16 hours to receive a message from voyager and about 1 day and 16 hours to send a message back. I found this which is very interesting “communications to mars take 10-20 minutes,” this is more than enough time for a rover to fall down a crater or cliff, so real time control is impossible. Although robots are cool, they still need some working on. They have a long way to go to get to our stage.

If I was to make a decision, was to make a list of my top priorities as a member of congress, this is a little what my list would look like,

1.    Health care/hospitals/medical research + facilities

2.   Providing a healthy learning environments/learning facilities for all students

3.   Providing food, water, shelter(housing) for every citizen.

4.   Having equal right

5.   Military

6.   Space exploration

The reason I would put health care/hospitals/medical research + facilities at 1^st is because I wouldn’t just set it aside for anything else. I mean, if anything we need more than just finding out new solutions to our new problems, we need to figure out solutions to our old problems first and then build up to the present problems. Like for an example, we haven’t found a cure for cancer yet, if we do, billions of people will be able to live a happy, stable, and secure life. Many people in the past have tried to find the solution t cure cancer and other harmful diseases, its not that they just didn’t want to find out the answer, they can, but they don’t have the right resources, facilities, and other tools to help them figure out the answer. This is why I want to put health care, medical research, and medical facilities at my number one priority.

Now, the reason that I put space exploration at my 6^th choice, is because all of the choices in the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th places are much more important than space exploration. Even thou I think space exploration is pretty cool and I think that it would be worth while spending a little money on it, I don’t think that it should be on the top 5 list of priorities for a government to decide on. It could definitely be in the top ten categories, because if you think about it, if there is any leftover money that the government wants to do something worthwhile with, I would spend it on space exploration. For an example, if I were a part of a government, I would have a budget that NASA could spend in 5 years total, then after 5 years they get a fresh budget! If they still have money in the budget then the 5^th yearly money will add on to it, so they can either save up for a big project, or take it slow. That would be my proposal to any government who has trouble with this.

In conclusion, I think that space exploration should be allowed, but to only give NASA a limited budget for so many years, that way, they have to be a little bit more careful with how they spend their money. Sometimes I wonder if we are actually making a good choice on weather we should cut NASA’s budget or not, weather we are making a good choice of taking peoples lives and putting them at risk for the sake of science. Although we might be making a good or bad choice, we will soon find out if we made a mistake or if we could change the future.