group18c

[group18c]

IS SPACE EXPLORATION REALLY WORTH IT? Space VS Other Flaws

By:  Virginia González, Maria Camila Gutierrez, Juan Sebastian Larios, Isabella Silva and Eduardo Leon. Group 1. 8C.

Space exploration has always been an interesting topic (especially now with the race to Mars), but they never told us the side effects of this. It is not any secret that space exploration is not low-cost or easy to perform and develop, but have you ever wondered in what things we could use the money spent in space exploration for? For example, this money could be used for investment in other major situations like poverty and cancer. The amount of economic resources being used will be compared with other major situations that should be prioritized, but are not. Even though Space Exploration is useful because it has helped in many areas such as medicine, science, energy, and the environment; the nations of the world should not spend that immense amount of money on space exploration which is not our top priority right now, instead we should focus in other major risks and flaws, such as hunger, COVID-19 or education.  

NASA’s budget increased 3% compared to last year, this could be seen as a small amount but is a 7 million difference, for example, in 2020 NASA’s budget was 22.6 billion dollars, but now in 2021, their budget is 23.3 billion dollars (Society, 2020). Problems on Earth are huge and there are so many that we can't even count them, we have climate change, hunger, overpopulation, underdevelopment, among others. But still, some countries take as a priority exploring or establishing a human presence on other planets. The US is the world’s largest investor in space at 58% of the world total, with China, France, Russia, and Japan following in that order. The US budget for space in 2020 totaled $48 billion, whilst China continued to maintain its second-place ranking, with an estimated $8.9 billion budget. France has also continued to increase its space budget, topping European national spending to overtake Russia as the third largest investor with a $4 billion budget envelope dedicated to space in 2020 (News Desk, 2020). Also, according to studies, in 2020 there are between 88 and 115 million poor people, and as amazing as it sounds there is a solution that could eradicate poverty. According to one study made in 2017 by Anthony Clunies Ross, we could eradicate poverty by just spending approximately $1.5 billion dollars (this study was made in 2017, but this amount couldn't grow much from 2017 to 2020, so we could still eradicate poverty). This is related to space because as we saw before, countries are used to spend billions of dollars on space exploration when they could make a found and end poverty by 2045-2050 according to studies. In addition, some places protest against the launches of rockets, for example, the ones in Kourou and Cayenne, the major cities in one of the poorest French overseas departments, where almost 40% of the population lives in average poverty, the highest murder rate in all the country, and the unemployment rate around 30%, which is more than double that of the mainland France. This French department is located in South America bordering Brazil near the equator, and it uses the Space Center there, to be easier to send space rockets to the equatorial geostationary orbit taking advantage of the angular momentum of the earth's rotation. France technically uses the territory for the Guiana Space Center, spends millions in observatories, launches, and researches while the rest of the population (almost three hundred thousand) lives in misery, this territory is almost completely forgotten by the French government. The amount of money spent in the Guiana Space Center near Kourou has alarmed the poor people in Cayenne and near urban areas and almost all the department and has created multiple protests and blocked roads of workers that refuse to live in such distress while the space center spends millions that could help them in jobs, in education, security and other multiple services, and even though the Government has sent ministers and has promised to help the place with several billion euros, things still haven't changed.    

As an interesting fact, when you compare the money spent in space and the money spent on other different things like Cancer or COVID-19, the difference is huge. Let’s see how many monetary resources are or have been invested in cancer research with how much is or has been invested in space exploration. Before beginning, let’s clarify that the money that has been invested in cancer research, has not been given by the government but with donations that people have made. In 2019 a group of people helped to invest more than 145.9 million dollars in cancer research and since 1946 there has been a total of more than 4.9 billion dollars for research. Now let’s see how much budget has been invested in the space faculty. In 2019, 18 countries spent at least 200 million dollars on space-related activities and a total of 22.3 billion has been invested in 479 space companies since 2009. This means that in just 10 years there have been more than 17.4 billion dollars in space in comparison with what cancer research has made in 73 years.  If we compare how much NASA has been requesting and using compared to the research for the cure of Covid-19, we can see a gigantic difference, currently, the Covid-19 vaccine has received 3.400 million dollars from donations and the vaccine is already done, meanwhile NASA asked for a profit of 135.000 million dollars for projects in 2020, and past years (without donations) NASA earns 20.000 million dollars in a year. In other words, NASA makes and asks for huge amounts of money in critical times.  

Even though space explorations are not the best thing ever, as explained in the past paragraphs, space exploration still has many advantages such as the different accomplishments they have done in the past decades, which are important and mind-blowing. These different advancements have moved humanity into more steps every single time. For example, technological development done by many intelligent people who have been able to expand their skills and contribute to humanity with what they do with companies like NASA, they have been helping in areas like medicine, transport, public safety, energy, and the environment with projects and gadgets like "Improved solar panels, implantable heart monitors, light‐based anti‐cancer therapy, cordless tools, lightweight high‐temperature alloys used in jet engine turbines, cameras found in today's cell phones, compact water‐purification systems, global search‐and‐rescue systems, and biomedical technologies." (NASA. 2013) which are now of great importance to humanity. Another advantage it has is that the data found by scientific research in space is leading to different discoveries with benefits to life on earth. Some ongoing research from the ISS in areas like "human physiology, plant biology, materials science, and fundamental physics – continues to yield insights that benefit society. For example, studies of the human body’s response to extended periods in the microgravity environment are improving our understanding of the aging process " (NASA. 2013)  that is one of the problems that humans face and that prevents them from having a longer life and achieving more things. Also, “Fundamental scientific studies of the Martian environment, its evolution and current state represent important benchmarks of terrestrial planetary evolution, and hence, provide a model that some scientists believe will aid our growing understanding of climate change processes on Earth.” (NASA. 2013) It is vital to stop climate change because if we don't, many disasters around the world could happen affecting us all.  

Space Exploration centers and everything related to the advancements of technology in our knowledge of the cosmos has made the Homo sapiens understand a ton of information we didn’t know a few hundred years ago, in an era like ours, our humanity has learned more than in any other time about space, and every single year there's more and more. Every single part of it is extremely useful and supportive, but there are still some things that may be a little more important, and even though space is an interesting topic that still has millions of things left to discover, there are still situations and problems right now around the globe that should be more prioritized, risks to our species. Millions and millions of money are spent by big countries such as the United States, China, France, Russia, or Japan are simply exaggerated, and they could decrease it and use it in other environments, not just in the space exploration faculty. Global warming, overpopulation, the increasing hunger and droughts, the injustice, the lack of education, the bad health care and the hundreds of diseases, and much more are a huge threat and should be taken care of, every single one of them, in every place of the world. In a few years, all these problems will grow and grow until there’s no way back, and we should all work together and use the economic resources we got to try to solve them, it's not the time to waste money, and were are not saying that the space exploration is a waste of money, but when there are so many problems moving around, space shouldn’t be the number one spot of interest.

Bibliography and Sources:

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