I just started thinking about it. Why is space exploration even that necessary? They’re spending so much money on it when we have so much problems in our own planet…
Necessary? No. Not much except eating, drinking and breathing is. Even reproduction is optional from the view of a single individual.
A good idea? Absolutely:
- Exploring space tells us a lot about earth. We currently assume that the moon formed when something big collided with earth and threw lots of material into a stable orbit. This means moon is probably made of the same materials as earth and because there is no erosion nor tectonic activity on the moon, it lets us study what earth may have looked like billions of years ago.
- Lots and lots of things that were originally developed for space are very useful on earth: teflon coating, memory foam matresses, efficient solar panels and many more. Sure, they could have been developed without space exploration but the pressure to get something exactly right helped a lot. And of course we directly use satellites for a lot of earth stuff, too. Think tv, weather prediction, monitoring of climate change, communication, GPS, accurate maps and many more.
- It gives humanity something to unite behind. Even during the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union ignored their feud for a bit to make Apollo-Soyuz happen. These days, the ISS is one of the biggest multinational projects and I dread the day it gets decommissioned because Russia will have one less reason to talk to the rest of the world.
The impact to society from space exploration is immense if not immeasurable.
- Weather forecasting
- GPS navigation
- Earth sciences
- Robotics
- Medical imaging
NASA has a website dedicated to the topic, as do other agencies around the world.
- https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/benefits-to-humanity/
- https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/about/everyday-benefits-of-space-exploration/
- https://www.space.gov.au/why-space-matters
- https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Benefits_of_space_science
There’s also a Wikipedia page on the topic:
The ingenuity and innovation required to make space travel possible (and efficient) is remarkable. Definitely falls into the category of “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” It’s important to continue challenging ourselves as a species.
All attempts to discover how the universe works benefits us. Even a lot of really esoteric stuff has proven useful in fields like medicine and civil engineering.
Honestly if we can pivot our high tech innovation efforts from being mainly driven by military needs to being driven by basic research (basic in this case meaning researching the natural world directly without any particular goal other than learning), we’d be a lot better off.
Let me rewrite your question, and correct me if I’m misrepresenting it:
“Why should we spend resources on X instead of Y?”
Well, for this kind of question, I would prefer to choose a “high value” X and an “important” Y.
Space exploration, and science as a whole, is extremely cheap and good for humanity.
Let’s talk about other expensive “X” first:
- Unnecessary war efforts.
- ICE (if we are taking about US)
- Saving banks when they screw up on their bets.
- Incentives to coal and gas when solar is already more viable …
Maybe you started to think about it because that’s an amazing subject, and it is. That alone should be reason enough for us to want to do it. But it is not the only reason. Space exploration already gave us a lot of tech we rely on today. And still, is a very difficult field that will require more tech advancements, that will benefit us in the future.
Necessary, yes. Furthering our knowledge of the cosmos is a worthwhile pursuit for its own sake. That being said, the sudden focus on NASA is pure political distraction, a clumsy attempt to foment nationalism that isn’t going to be as effective as its architects were hoping.
a clumsy attempt to foment nationalism that isn’t going to be as effective as its architects were hoping.
It could have been effective if the lead up to the NASA push had lent itself to any hope of cooperation within our govt. As it stands, it just feels like a way for the ultra-wealthy to advance their commercial space interests through taxpayer funding.
Absolutely and unequivocally yes. Nothing should constrain the boundaries of scientific study in space, especially now that our years are numbered due to climate change and dumbass fascists and dictators with launch codes. Whities on the moon, while a noble and valuable sentiment, should be altered to whities on patrol or something.
I’m so sick and tired of seeing Americans bitch about space exploration colonialism and remain silent on the colonialism that continues to kill and exploit Innocent people across the world.
Yes, we need better social infrastructure desperately, but that should come at the cost of terrestrial imperialism, not space exploration.
yes. there’s two branching discussions here:
- Space as a scientific topic, it needs to be understood. Our observation of reality is very local, and although we can prove that some of our assumptions about physics, life and civilization work on our neighborhood, it doesn’t mean that they’re the same everywhere. That alone is sufficient reason for me, to explore.
- Space as the new frontier. Many if not all exploration done on planet Earth has been, in some shape or form, resource-motivated. Lands, food, medicine, minerals, routes, are all found through exploration and normally through people spending money looking for a return over investment. Space is no different.
I think the interesting part is where this two branches touch: If we ever plan on capturing an asteroid for mining, the technology needs to be there to do it, and hopefully the technology is about the benefit of all humankind. This kind of development is showing us the way to move forward and solve problems. Imagine a world when we don’t need to destroy ecosystems in order to get iron because all iron comes from off-world.
I used to think this, but here’s the problem: new resources to extract mean absolutely fuck all under the current global paradigm.
There’s enough iron out there to make several tons of it available to every human in existence for whatever they need or want to do. Will that happen? No. It’s not profitable for the owner class to do that. Instead, they will fight amongst themselves until someone has an effective monopoly on asteroid mining, and then limit the supply so they can generate maximal profit (De Beers, anyone?)
We have the capability, right now, to feed everyone on Earth. To clothe everyone. To house everyone. We don’t. Any resources out there that we might find useful will be gated behind the same greedy, psychopathic group of leeches that currently control everything else.
The planet isn’t being destroyed because we had no choice. The planet is being destroyed so a bunch of MBAs could show off a nice graph at the quaterly meeting. It is very much delibrate. Any resource extraction in space will solely be done in that it is more profitable than doing it on Earth, climate be damned. We need to fix that problem before asteroid mining for the good of Earth and humanity is even an option.
Firstly, people have such a massive misconception about the cost of space exploration. It is such a miniscule part of our overall expenditure it is a drop in the ocean. (It’s important now to distinguish between overall Space budgets and the exploration budgets since we spend a lot of money in space that’s not for scientific development nowadays).
The Artemis program for example was 93 billion over 13 years, ~7 billion per year (2012-2025).
The Iraq war cost ~5 trillion over 8 years. Or 625 billion per year.
The entire Artemis program could have been funded by winding down the Iraq war a couple of months earlier.
The annual cost of the NHS is 275 billion per year.
The extra knowledge, research and development in everything from materials, human biology, life support systems, to just engineering management improvements yield absolutely massive benefits to life on earth, greatly outweighing the alternative.
Not to mention inspiring people to enter STEM, especially girls who are still hugely underrepresented. Which has incredible benefits. Hell, even just making people excited about science and technology instead of so distrustful of it is so so important and intangible.
Even if you extend the budgets to the entire space industry, it’s still a drop in the ocean, and most of the space industry budgets go directly to economic or defence benefits. Supply chain resilience, climate change policing, communications services, wildfire detection, industrial efficiency gains (e.g. data driven farming). As well as existential threats from space like solar storms and asteroids (although that’s an admittedly tiny portion of funding).
This is coming from a space engineer and senior manager who has mostly fallen out of love with the industry because it is leaning towards profit focus instead of benefit focus. But it’s still one of the best bang for buck industries that exists.
The extra knowledge, research and development in everything from materials, human biology, life support systems, to just engineering management improvements yield absolutely massive benefits to life on earth, greatly outweighing the alternative.
This is the non-linear aspect of research, where discoveries and improvements in one field may prove useful for other fields as well. Not all research pays off, but you can’t predict what will and won’t, so the “duds” that end up going nowhere are just part of the cost for the bangers that change the world. And who knows, maybe one of those duds may end up going off much later still!
Not to mention inspiring people to enter STEM, especially girls who are still hugely underrepresented. Which has incredible benefits.
More brains and perspectives examining a given problem increases the chances for useful solutions. Getting women into STEM isn’t a diversity measure for diversity’s sake, but an enrichment of the mental resource pool.
because it is leaning towards profit focus instead of benefit focus
Now there’s a chorus I’ve heard a hundred times…
Agree completely!
And yeah, VCs doing VC things has really made it a tough industry to be in lately 😭 I miss the early days of new space when we were just a bunch of nerds trying to make the space industry more effective at making the world a better place.
Edit: don’t get me wrong, a lot of VCs are great, and have done wonders for the industry. I’ve had the pleasure of working with a few of them. However, the explosion of a new industry has attracted a bunch who just see a market for a market’s sake.
Yes, we need to do things like space exploration because these are the endeavours that advance humanity. Even in practical terms, plenty of discoveries that are useful here come from technologies developed for space exploration. If you’re really worried about unproductive use of resouces, maybe worry about how we deal with the pedo elites that rule over us and hoard resources on unimaginable scale.
But we need pedo billionaires as test pilots for stress testing experimental rocket designs :((
Looking at the list of government expenditures, I don’t see space exploration as problematic as other things we are spending money on.
Yes. Space exploration pushes science and technology forward, which benefits humanity as a whole.
Yes, but capitalists should not do it. And actually space exploration on today’s scale cost literal pennies compared to military or shareholders loot.
The word necessary has a lot of wiggle room here. What are necessities? Going by the bare minimum:
- food
- water
- protection from the elements
- protection from illness/infection
- continuation of the species
That’s about everything we truly ‘need’ to die of old age and not go extinct. Nearly everything people currently do is a subset of those needs. Space exploration can be marked under both protection from the elements and continuation of the species.
Well… short term no it’s not necessary (although as other folks have said on the thread it does give some technology advancements, and gives humanity a warm fuzzy sense of achievement)
Long term, it depends on the eval criteria
- If we want the human race to live as long as possible, then I would say yes - to diversify, distribute and minimise the risk of planetary (Earth) failure
- If we don’t give a toss about the human race then no, the Universe will be just fine without us
Cutting founding for space wouldn’t mean that the founding goes to a good thing on earth.
Why is this argument always brought up?
Theoretically we have enough resources to give everyone a home food, education, healthcare and go to space.
