Is Space Exploration Worth It?

I've always been a firm believer in that the human race could benefit from heading out into the known universe. But does that come without growing pains? Perhaps in a perfect world it might.

In a week so wrought with space related disaster -- first, that doomed flight to the ISS, then the crashing of Richard Branson's latest space venture test flight -- it's no wonder that faith in venturing beyond the stars has been shaken. Yes, loyal taxpayers may think twice about backing private space companies for the time being, but it was a calculated risk on their part.

On the news this morning I happened to observe a bulletin entitled something along the lines of "Is space exploration "too dangerous"?" That might seem as pointing out the obvious, but it still has to be considered. Yes, venturing beyond that karman line is fraught with danger and peril. But wasn't pioneering the earliest motor cars, steam powered locomotives and propeller planes a risky task too? Look how many decades it took for us to perfect those earthbound technologies and compare that against how old the 'space age' is? over two centuries verses a paltry fifty even. To quote Virgin's founder;

And it seems that the pattern of past troubles repeats once again.

What was also mentioned on the news program this morning was the idea that space exploration was "too expensive" for commercial companies to try. Sure, since NASA eased off on manned space missions not bound for the ISS, a wealth of private companies have flooded the scene with ideas of grandeur. Most have yet to deliver on their ideals, not moving much further beyond SpaceX's 'Dragon' capsule. There is a belief out there that space exploration should only be tackled by an organisation with unlimited resources and money, with men and woman who are willing to die for the sake of progress. But why stick all your eggs in the same, proverbial basket?

These early hiccups will always be considered a "A painful stepping stone in human progress." We'll mourn, lose our way, grow disenchanted. But why call time entirely? One only has to look to the images returned by the Hubble telescope, or the terabytes of information beamed back to base from the Viking, Sputnik, Discovery, Curiosity and a wealth of over rover-based and fly-by missions. We're in an age where the human explorer is being substituted by technology, robots sent to probe for life beyond our speck of dirt and dust suspended in a sun beam. Technology has come along in leaps and bound in the past decade than half of the last century. We'll learn from these private failures. And given time, I firmly believe we will one day manage to commercialise space travel.

There's simply too much out there that's worth exploring with our own eyes.

 

I've always felt that Space exploration inspired creativity, and progress, Just think how much duller TV would be without it, just to name an obvious thing.
It is dangerous though, and I wish that we still had a full NASA program, since I personally feel it's a bit more sketchy asking private companies to build a rocketship kinda like investing with a craigs list ad. but it is what it is, and I still think we should move forward, who knows what advances could be made. maybe they will develop a technology to turn wild animals into energy so that we can train and battle with them

 

I believe that space exploration is still "worth it" but that it should be handed over to commercial companies now.

In my opinion the days of NASA are over, Virgin Galactic's White Knight 2 and SpaceX's plan to mine meteors are some examples of how space exploration could be turned into a useful and worthwhile thing.

exploration for the sake of exploration while an interesting concept is not worthwhile in the long run, allow companies to start to harness this frontier and possibilities for exploration will open.

 

If people did not watch interstellar, the best movie about space, its about
a world when earth is now not useable, and they need a solution to that.
Then, we thought that space is the key to it. Even that the dangers to it is massive,
space exploration is important because we can make a new home, and get more solar power and make a diffrence that thought was impossible. Space exploration is improtant, and it will be needed.

 

To be honest I think it's definitely worth it! Why not explore the unknown? It's so interesting, and sending a rocket into space is way less expensive than making a movie, so think of all the bad movies that costed millions to produce and have wasted money, that's something worth thinking about.

 

Because in the unknown, there are other things that can kill us that we don't know about.

 

Well that's quite a fair point, but I think a lot of the unknown has killed us, like discovering something new on earth itself, thinking about it a lot of things can kill you. And we may not know if they could kill us, because we don't know yet, because that's unknown

 

I'm not against exploring, but I just wanted to point out a counterpoint to exploring space.

 

Space exploring is sure worth it. Us humans have already discovered most of Earth, so next up is outer space, I say!
And during the past, while we explored new areas of our planet, people died as well, hmm? I believe such "sacrifices" have to be made for such things. If it's preventable, try to prevent it. But such things happens. We are only human, after all. We make mistakes.

Actually, lots of convenient inventions come from the NASA, who originally invented the stuff for in-space use.
That's a big difference between the U.S. and Russia: the U.S. is great when it comes to having leading technology, while Russia is good at smart using the stuff they already have.

 

Oh man, if I would have noticed this thread sooner I would have posted in this a long, long time ago.

Now, is space worth exploration worth it?

All right, before I answer this, we have three very main important factors to look at:
Money to Spend, Technology, and Earth's Overall Health.

America is currently in tremendous debt. In order to save money, Obama cut back the spending that NASA was using for research. Unfortunately, since this a a government ran facility, it's only obligations are from Congress or any other Political influences and it's customers. Simply put, it can not be placed in a situation to "owe you one" when it comes to commercial companies -- which is why, though is authorized to receive donations, the GAO has made it pretty much impossible for NASA to seek donations. Since we're in tremendous debt, this definitely cuts back on the amount of money that could be put towards research such as creating Anti Matter, understanding exactly what Dark Matter is, sending people to Mars, Quantum Teleportation, etc.

With out the money to research or use such important fundamentals, we're kind of stuck in a hole, right?

However, with that being said, Moore's Law states that technology doubles every two years. Though NASA may not have the funding right now, with other, non-space related facilities, governmental (HAARP, for example) or Commercial discover more and more things, the higher chances that NASA will be able to use other's research to develop their own tools. When technology advances, the prices lower for older technology as they become obsolete. So though NASA may not be able to afford the research today, who's to say that, maybe, within the next oh... 20 years or so, NASA wouldn't be able to to afford the technology they need now in order to do proper space exploration? Murphy's Law comes into play with literally everything. In 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man to enter orbit. Shortly after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins landed on the Moon in Apollo 11 with only 4 MEGABYTES flying their ship. 4 Megabytes is hardly anything as we all know now. (And that was only 54 years ago.) In this day and age we have 3D Printers and are already researching and developing 4D Printers. The only flaw is that eventually we will come to a point where technology will not be able to advance any further until humans discover another groundbreaking utility. That discovery would have to be along the lines of traveling at the speed of light -- but the probability of humans discovering that before technology comes to an ultimate halt is rather high. So with time, we solve the money issue when it comes to actual space exploration -- all hope isn't lost!

But do we have the time to wait for technology to catch up...?

Well... the answer is... maybe not.
Right now, though we don't hear about it much in public, Earth's resources for pretty much everything is deteriorating rather quickly.
Water Supply, Food Supply, Gas, Oil, etc is all running out while what we use is pretty much causing Climate Change.


EARTH IS PREDICTED TO CROSS THE CLIMATE DANGER THRESHOLD BY 2036


Taken from http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

That's the effects of the change already. Mother nature is not happy about the way her land is being treated. We already have irreversible effects from this drastic climate change that is going to happen within the next 100 years. The weather is going to get exceptionally worse, polar caps are going to melt, the sea levels are going to drastically rise, plants aren't going to survive, etc.

Simply put, we do not have the time to completely rework the world with environmentally friendly technology. (or even discover these kind of technologies)

Now what does this all have to do with space exploration?

Space exploration is a way of finding new opportunities. We're able to probe resources from other planets, dwarf planets, moons, or even asteroids. But with the recent discoveries of rock planets in the "Goldilocks zone", we might have a safe haven to go to just incase we, as a human race, fails with our own planet. Technology needs to evolve, but we've done so much damage to Earth we might not have the time to let it evolve.

So does Space Exploration needs to happen?
Definitely so, there's no doubt denying that.

But the question is -- how exactly do we work towards this goal with the terrible situation we've placed ourselves in?
There is a consequence to every side no matter which way you look at it.