Is Spaceflight a Waste?
Spaceflight has been around since the 1900s and has been used to accomplish many incredible things. However, most of these achievements stayed in space and never really impacted us here on Earth. It seems as though the only thing spaceflight is doing is polluting Earth right? Well in this passage, we will review the history of anti-spaceflight movements and compare both sides to see if spaceflight really is a waste.
A low quality image showing the explosion of Spacex’s “Grasshopper“ test rocket. This rocket alone costed $53 million. (The rocket is the little mushroom cloud looking thing hovering in the air)
There is an ongoing controversy over the spaceflight industry, as there have been a few attempts to bring down the programs. After the first people stepped on the moon in July of 1969, NASA felt the need to send more missions in order to conduct more experiments, as new technology was introduced after each flight. In December of 1972, the last Apollo mission was launched before the government finally cut their budget. NASA managed to get numerous soil samples and successful projects out of this, allowing 12 men to walk on the moon, each one staying for an average of 36 hours each. But this brings us back to the same question, “How does any of this help us?”
A picture taken of the last human(s) on the moon, Eugene Cernan and Ronald Evans
This is also the question that most of the public asked before and after the Apollo program. Pointing out how much NASA was spending for some trips to the moon. For reference, across all launches, the Apollo missions cost $25 billion, or nearly $257 billion in today’s money. Now that’s a lot! Most surveys conducted throughout the 1970s came back with relatively positive responses, as the majority of citizens were satisfied with where the spaceflight industry was. The small percentage of people who weren’t began making statements.
Neil Maher, an author of the famous book “Apollo in the Age of Aquarius” , was one of these people. Maher stated -
“The money spent on spaceflight missions such as Apollo were to be better used on economic and societal problems.”
And so a peaceful protest happened on the front gates to a NASA building, with a man at the front holding a sign with, “$12 to feed an astronaut, we can feed a starving child for $8“ written on it. However, nothing seemed to change in the years following this protest. And so we are here, in the 21st century where the focus has shifted away from just NASA. It began with the problem of rocket failures, causing the massive debris to fall out of the sky and ultimately polluting the oceans and other landscapes with more trash.
China having to deal with it’s rocket launching circumstances. As every launch results in some kind of debris destruction.
Bigger problems arose with the rise of private space companies such as Spacex, Blue Origin, and Boeing. These three companies in specific have one thing in common; commercializing space travel. This idea has not only grabbed the attention of rich investors looking for an open spot, but also pulled in the heroes of space, the Apollo astronauts. Niel Armstrong and Eugene Cernan have both testified against commercial flights. Are you with them?
Niel Armstrong’s statement on human spaceflight, made on 2010
Well, why don’t we review the good side of spaceflight. It may seem from the passage above that space flight is undoubtedly bad for both the economy and the environment, but wait, let me persuade you. Now for some 4th wall breaking… Up until now, this article has been mostly informative, but the twist is that this is now an opinionated article from here:
For me, there are many wonders to be discovered in space, and what better way to find them other than exploring it first hand. This is done with the help of rovers that can interact with things on different celestial bodies. We also have satellites that can carry complex technology to not just look at planets but observe them. Alongside the assistance of another person, a satellite is able to find out the size, density, and composition of the figure.
Some of the main information gathered by satellites that orbited and observed Mars for the decades they existed.
This research may seem useless at first glance, but it can actually help us! Humans have been using up all of Earth’s resources at a rapidly increasing speed, where else could we go? Well space obviously. Spaceship capsules and modules can host living organisms for a pretty long time if given food and water. A real world example of this is the International Space Station (ISS). Don’t exclude living on a planet, as that is also very well possible. As NASA has discovered over 1000 habitable planets in our galaxy alone. Habitable, meaning that the planet is exactly far enough away from its sun that it is neither too hot nor cold, this area can be found in almost all star systems called the Habitable Zone.
A well drawn diagram of the habitable zones of different main sequence stars.\
Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo
Anyway, resuming back to why spaceflight is good, we can see that researching about the unknown, in this case space, can open up a window of opportunity and can also provide us with more of an understanding of how this world works. Our Earth can be thought of to be one of many gears in a neverending complex system, a system we have yet to learn or discover. Spaceflight is that one key to opening most if not everything.
