The Case for Space

Space exploration is often seen as an excess of Humanity, funded at the expense of more important needs. Surely the 150 billion dollars spent on the International Space Station would have been better used combating poverty, or cancer, or climate change? However, people often don’t look beyond the immediate and the conspicuous elements of space travel, and thus ignore the important effects that space exploration has on civilisation.

For a long time space exploration has perched on the edge of technological know-how. Many people are familiar with the fact that the Moon landing was achieved with less than the computing power of a pocket calculator. The list of technologies that were either developed or improved through the space programme is enormous. A cursory glance at Wikipedia’s ‘NASA spin-off technologies’ page will show you an imposing list of such technologies, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), radically improved solar energy and structural analysis software. Whilst even these important technologies pale in the face of the many billions that were poured into the Space Race, they cannot be ignored when looking at the value of that funding.

Space exploration is not just about landing people on other planets; it is about putting satellites into orbit, sending unmanned probes to distant reaches of the solar system, and learning more about the Universe we inhabit. The benefits that satellites have brought us are immediately clear – information networks, weather forecasting, monitoring farming, atmospheric studies and so on. An understanding of climate change, a phenomenon that could prove to be the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, would have been immensely more difficult had we not made such concerted efforts to leave the planet. Our ability to communicate would also have been greatly diminished without satellites that can send signals to the other side of the Earth in a fraction of a second.

Sending unmanned probes has improved our knowledge of other planets and other-worldly bodies, and by extension has augmented our understanding of our own planet. By looking at how the climates of planets like Mars and Venus have changed we gain insight on the mechanisms that affect our own. Space-based telescopes have allowed us to peer into the depths of space, showing us a previously hidden Universe that has lent help to our knowledge of physics. Even today space exploration is trying to answer the most important questions that we can ask: Are we alone? Why is there something instead of nothing? What does out future hold? In this respect, space exploration is a necessity for us to satisfy our species’ endless search for knowledge and new frontiers.

Our tentative first steps into space have also had a cultural effect. The heavily publicised major events of space exploration have likely inspired a generation of engineers, scientists and technologists. It was an affirmation of the exciting ideal that anything humanity can imagine, it can achieve; to paraphrase Kennedy, ‘We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard’. Undoubtedly the earlier stages of the journey into space may have had an even greater effect if it was in the spirit of co-operation, as it is increasingly nowadays, but the direct and indirect effects of the events that captured the entire world’s imagination cannot be understated.

Our decision to beginning, and continue, our forage into space will be crucial to Humanity’s long-term survival. The impact by a large asteroid (or similar apocalyptic event such as nuclear war) is not a matter of if, but when. We will be very glad when that we started when we did, when that time comes. If we had dismissed space exploration as an unnecessary luxury, we would have literally putting all our eggs in one basket. It only needs one rouge comet (or nation!) to put an end to virtually all human life on Earth, and at least now we stand a fighting chance at being able to do something about it.

 

Some of the effects of space travel are not easily tangible. Arguably pictures from space, such as Earthrise (right) or the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (see elsewhere) have given many people a new world-view. To see our small oasis in an endless sea of unforgiving space underlines our need to protect it, and maintain a sense of perspective. In the words of Carl Sagan:

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

- Daniel