A poll conducted by Explore Mars and Phillips & Company found that 71 percent of Americans surveyed are confident that the U.S. will land a human on Mars within two decades. This recent wave of enthusiasm follows last year’s landing of the unmanned Rover on Mars. Upon finding out that NASA gets just 0.5 percent of the federal budget, 75 percent of respondents agreed that NASA’s budget should be doubled to fund a human-led Mars mission.
Point five sounds like a sliver, but given the supersized U.S. federal cake that weighs in at a massive $3+ trillion a year that sliver ($17.7 billion) is sizeable enough to feed nations, and if doubled… the entire world. The UN estimated that world hunger could be eradicated for a cost of only $30 billion a year. To put it in perspective, feeding one person in a developing nation in Africa costs about 10 cents a day. The cost per launch for a space shuttle was $1.5 billion. And of the 135 shuttle flights, none went nearly as far as Mars.
NASA does more than just explore space. It develops new technology and provides useful data about the Earth. And it should keep on doing that, but given the dire circumstances planet Earth is in, space exploration needs to be re-evaluated before the world enters into another space race—one with far greater ambitions, and far greater costs (both economic and environmental), than landing a man on the moon.
Will we leave a legacy for future generations through space travel? No doubt. It’s quite an accomplishment to make it to Mars or even to the moon. But the question is whether it’s a legacy we want to leave, and a question well worth asking ourselves. It most definitely is an accomplishment if we’re just out to prove that we can do it, but when picked apart for what it really is—a mission to a pretty much dead planet—it’s hard to justify humans rocketing off to explore other worlds when our own world is a complete disaster. And NASA has the pictures to prove it.
Scientists say landing on another planet is important to uncover the mystery of extraterrestrial life. Sure enough, all kinds of data will come back that will advance our knowledge, and we’ll never know how much farther ahead we’ll get until we go out and do it, but for what? To look for friends on other planets when we can’t even appreciate the friends we already have?
Though the space exploration budget is minimal as compared to the war budget or health care, that is now. Budgets have a nasty habit of sprawling out of control, particularly when emotions are high and common sense is low. In the 1960s, a sizeable 3.5 percent of the budget went towards landing a man on the moon.
Beyond the bucks there’s another thing to think about. To waste our own dollars on excessive consumption, like the estimated 40 percent of food that gets trashed, is one thing, but to waste tax dollars is wholly different. If the decision to spend stands up through the political process it’s given the OK from citizens, quite unlike excessive consumption fuelled by business that people can write off as being the result of greedy corporations. Just as conscientious objectors to military taxation oppose funding warfare, environmental tax objectors can oppose funding space travel.
With Virgin Galactic soon making commercial space travel a reality (and competitors lining up for a slice of space pie) a space race is imminent. Imagine how barren the skies were pre-air travel as compared to today and the problem is quickly realized. What is different about the commercial space race and a government-funded one is that we the people are clearly endorsing the latter with our tax dollars.
With the might of imperialistic ambition, science is out to conquer all. But what of the mystery of life? Can we not just be content gazing up at the stars in wonder or the many wonders that our own planet provides? We don’t even need to look up or out to discover the many miracles waiting within our very selves.
And a deeper dilemma of the space quest is that as we further disconnect from our own planet, we inevitably disconnect from ourselves. So if we can’t understand ourselves, how could we possibly understand extra-terrestrials?
What do you think of space exploration? Do we need to land a person on Mars?
