Vote totals:
Yes:
29%
No:
57%
Neutral:
14%
DEBATE: SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
There are more pressing earthly matters
Science may well give us good things. We all know velcro came from NASA. But why bother spending all this money exploring space and finding out there was water on Mars at some point in the last few thousand years when these same great minds could be applied to finding better ways to power humanity’s insatiable desire for energy, to feeding the starving millions around the globe, and generally making life down here better before looking up into the heavens.
The needs of humanity should always come first. While there are people on Earth who need help, they should be helped, rather than seeing money spent on sending robots onto other planets.
There are always more pressing matters. Why spend money providing street lighting when there are starving children in Africa? Simply because that’s the way it works. Yes, it would be great if governments suddenly decided to spend all their taxpayers’ money helping people on the other side of the world, but it’s simply not going to happen.
Space exploration does indeed help humanity, so saying humanity should be prioritised is misleading in this debate.
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
Space exploration gives us no direct benefit
There have been no direct benefits from space travel; the only ‘good things’ to come from it are indirect, and not the end aims. NASA weren’t aiming for velcro, but the moon. We got velcro, the moon gave us nothing except some pretty pictures of the planet below. Scientists and inventors could give us the same by-products for a lot less cost if the associated space exploration was removed from the equation.
Furthermore, a lot of the ‘advances’ space exploration bring us is irrelevant to daily life: why bother spending money developing a pen that works in zero-gravity when a) a pencil will do and b) the vast majority of the world’s 6 billion people will never experience zero gravity?
However indirect they might be, the advances would not have come were it not for the space programmes of NASA, as there would have been no technological need. Space exploration gave impetus to projects that have been useful, as well as providing valuable scientific knowledge.
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
The Earth itself is not fully explored yet
Space exploration has always been a gimmick. The USA was doing it only to look better than the USSR and vice versa; it has never really been about the science.
There are far more valuable scientific endeavours to fund, such as the exploration of our own planet. The seabed, especially around volcanic regions, is relatively unexplored, as is Antarctica. One recent news story about a ‘lost tribe’ also highlighted the fact that we are not in contact with all indigenous peoples across the planet.
The scientific knowledge obtainable from our own planet, particularly organisms that inhabit locations with extreme conditions, offers far more value than that of space.
Potential organisms to be found in space (such as on Mars) offer exactly the same value to the scientific community, and perhaps more, as the conditions would be far more extreme than those found on the Earth.
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
Scientific knowledge has value beyond the measurements of cost
The argument that humanity will need to find a new habitat to survive is a stretch and paranoid. Humans are already dying due to poverty and the lack of food etc. The millions of dollars of government funding that goes to space exploration could instead be used to save the humans who are already dying in our world. No-one is going to argue against the value of knowledge but there is a greater value in spending more on food supplies which has a certain result of feeding the hungry, whereas certain results are not present in the theory of discovering a sustainable planet.
Knowledge is invaluable. Furthering our understanding of how the universe came into being, and ultimately how we came into being, cannot be measured as useful solely in terms of cost. What price to pay for knowing that in the future, humanity can be saved because there are other planets out there capable of sustaining life?
Scientific knowledge has intrinsic worth. Space exploration is just one aspect of science that seems to have little impact on our daily lives. Who cares if the Higgs-Boson exists? Very few people. But governments have funded a new particle collider at CERN to find it because they recognise the importance of finding it to understanding the universe.
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
The cost isn’t actually very high
Although the cost is not high relative to other government expenditure, it is still an additional cost that the taxpayer is burdened with. If this debate is saying that space exploration is pointless then it means spending money on nothing so is definitely a waste. Even if it’s a small amount it is still an amount that could be spent elsewhere.
Compared to other areas of government spending (e.g. military), the cost of space exploration simply isn’t ridiculously high. There have been space vehicles built in the private sector for as little as $25m, a drop in the ocean compared to US spending in Iraq, and the net benefits outweigh even these figures.
SPACE EXPLORATION IS A WASTE OF MONEY
It is in man’s nature to explore his environment.
Indeed it is our nature to explore our environment – but that environment is not zero-gravity, extremes (and not the bearable extremes we experience on earth) of temperatures and terrain.
Indeed, there is still a substantial area of our own planet we have yet to fully explore. Why rush off to space when we’ve not seen all of our own planet yet?
Without the urge to ‘see what’s out there’ the continents would still be populated by the indigenous races. North Americans would all be Native Americans, Africans would all be black, and Australia would have only Aborigines and kangaroos.
Let’s take this argument to its extremities: Suppose no one had ever wondered if there was another little village somewhere in the world. Then every group of civilised people would have to grow in their own shell of ignorance. The printing press would have remained in Germany unless some other nation happened to stumble on the same process. The same would apply to…well, the list is just too long and life is too short.
YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!