I just started thinking about it. Why is space exploration even that necessary? They’re spending so much money on it when we have so much problems in our own planet…
The point is the advancement of science, not simply the travel itself. Space science is integral to many advances we take for granted these days.
Space exploration falls into the category of “luxury spending” for me. Only when every human on Earth is fed, clothed and housed should we be looking out to the heavens.
No, it’s unnecessary and a waste of money
not strictly necessary, no. but so is a lot of what we do today.
it’d be cool.
How else will we be able to someday mass travel through space to find another planet once we inevitably kill this one?
Well… short term no it’s not necessary (although as other folks have said on the thread it does give some technology advancements, and gives humanity a warm fuzzy sense of achievement)
Long term, it depends on the eval criteria
- If we want the human race to live as long as possible, then I would say yes - to diversify, distribute and minimise the risk of planetary (Earth) failure
- If we don’t give a toss about the human race then no, the Universe will be just fine without us
Not really, it’s more like a childhood dream that nobody investing will see IF it will give any results and/or is just a over expensive hobby, for the sake of have the knowledge of guessing of what is the planet that is over 5000 years light away from us might be made of. Who knows! It might have some form of H2O!
Spaceflight creates jobs.
Yes, but I think the efforts right now should go into solving the climate crisis rather than going to the moon.
We CAN do both. They might contribute to each other.
But what we can definitely fucking all agree is that spending all of our money on weapons in an effort to kill each other over which colour clothes Santa is wearing is pretty dumb.
And world hunger, world peace… there is a list of things that should take priority.
All attempts to discover how the universe works benefits us. Even a lot of really esoteric stuff has proven useful in fields like medicine and civil engineering.
Honestly if we can pivot our high tech innovation efforts from being mainly driven by military needs to being driven by basic research (basic in this case meaning researching the natural world directly without any particular goal other than learning), we’d be a lot better off.
yes. there’s two branching discussions here:
- Space as a scientific topic, it needs to be understood. Our observation of reality is very local, and although we can prove that some of our assumptions about physics, life and civilization work on our neighborhood, it doesn’t mean that they’re the same everywhere. That alone is sufficient reason for me, to explore.
- Space as the new frontier. Many if not all exploration done on planet Earth has been, in some shape or form, resource-motivated. Lands, food, medicine, minerals, routes, are all found through exploration and normally through people spending money looking for a return over investment. Space is no different.
I think the interesting part is where this two branches touch: If we ever plan on capturing an asteroid for mining, the technology needs to be there to do it, and hopefully the technology is about the benefit of all humankind. This kind of development is showing us the way to move forward and solve problems. Imagine a world when we don’t need to destroy ecosystems in order to get iron because all iron comes from off-world.
I used to think this, but here’s the problem: new resources to extract mean absolutely fuck all under the current global paradigm.
There’s enough iron out there to make several tons of it available to every human in existence for whatever they need or want to do. Will that happen? No. It’s not profitable for the owner class to do that. Instead, they will fight amongst themselves until someone has an effective monopoly on asteroid mining, and then limit the supply so they can generate maximal profit (De Beers, anyone?)
We have the capability, right now, to feed everyone on Earth. To clothe everyone. To house everyone. We don’t. Any resources out there that we might find useful will be gated behind the same greedy, psychopathic group of leeches that currently control everything else.
The planet isn’t being destroyed because we had no choice. The planet is being destroyed so a bunch of MBAs could show off a nice graph at the quaterly meeting. It is very much delibrate. Any resource extraction in space will solely be done in that it is more profitable than doing it on Earth, climate be damned. We need to fix that problem before asteroid mining for the good of Earth and humanity is even an option.
Yes.
Absolutely and unequivocally yes. Nothing should constrain the boundaries of scientific study in space, especially now that our years are numbered due to climate change and dumbass fascists and dictators with launch codes. Whities on the moon, while a noble and valuable sentiment, should be altered to whities on patrol or something.
I’m so sick and tired of seeing Americans bitch about space exploration colonialism and remain silent on the colonialism that continues to kill and exploit Innocent people across the world.
Yes, we need better social infrastructure desperately, but that should come at the cost of terrestrial imperialism, not space exploration.
The impact to society from space exploration is immense if not immeasurable.
- Weather forecasting
- GPS navigation
- Earth sciences
- Robotics
- Medical imaging
NASA has a website dedicated to the topic, as do other agencies around the world.
- https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/benefits-to-humanity/
- https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/about/everyday-benefits-of-space-exploration/
- https://www.space.gov.au/why-space-matters
- https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Benefits_of_space_science
There’s also a Wikipedia page on the topic:
Only if music is.
