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I get this question from time to time. Why go? Why spend
the money for rockets to space when there are problems here on
Earth?
You might as well ask why the British government financed
Captain Cook's circumnavigation of the world, or why Queen
Isabella financed Columbus, or why our ancestors bothered to
leave their nice, dry caves in the first place.
Without exploration, without frontiers, the Human species
will turn in on itself like rats in a cage. It's already
begun. With the closing of frontiers, the twentieth century
was the most violent in world history.
Without frontiers, the hope for a better life elsewhere
will die. Even the United States, the frontier hope of
immigrants from three continents seeking freedom and fortune
for two hundred years, is closing its borders.
Fact is, we aren't spending nearly enough. According to
the Office of Management and Budget,
for fiscal 2003 the US spent $6.131 billion on Human
spaceflight. It sounds like a lot, but against the (on-budget)
Defense Department budget of $364.847 billion, it's
practically a rounding error. Hell, the US Air Force spent
$18.451 billion on research, three billion dollars more than
NASA's entire budget.
The
B-2 Spirit "stealth" bombers cost
$1.157 billion each in 1998 dollars. The USAF has 21 of these
planes.
The most recent Space Shuttle,
Endeavour, (named after Captain
Cook's ship) cost about
$2.0 billion. A total of six
Space Shuttles were constructed, of which one (Enterprise) was
an atmospheric test vehicle now in the Smithsonian. Two
(Challenger and Columbia) have been lost. Three (Atlantis,
Discovery, Endeavour) remain. Three.
And the
benefits to those on Earth are tremendous. Forget Tang, the space
program is responsible for the development of microcomputers,
MRI scanners, wireless communications, improved baby foods,
shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke
detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries,
trash compactors, radiation insulation, digital imaging, laser
angioplasty, teflon, programmable pacemakers, ultrasound
scanners, automatic insulin pump, portable x-ray device,
invisible braces, dental arch wire, palate surgery technology,
clean room apparel, Doppler radar, firefighters' radios, lead
poison detectors, fire detectors, flame detectors, and literally
hundreds of other technologies.
And then there's the whole "all our eggs in one baskets" thing:
"Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing
as a bad idea and take care of our own problems at home?"
"No. We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten
different scientists about the environment, population
control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but
there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on.
Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a
million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out.
When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn
Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and ... Buddy Holly and
Aristophanes ... and all of this ... all of this was for
nothing. Unless we go to the stars." (J. Michael Straczynski)
It's a big universe out there, and our single world and its
fragile civilization are at the mercy of Earth-crossing asteroids, not
to mention self-inflicted environmental
disaster and war. Can we, as a nation that
every day benefits from our Space Program, really believe that
the Human exploration and settlement of space is somehow not a
national priority?
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