Is investing in space exploration worth it?
In recent years, human life is gradually threatened by the accelerating increase of population and environmental degradation. Therefore, the idea of exploring a new habitable planet has been proposed and received encouragement and hope from numerous people around the world. However, moving to other planets is definitely a big change of humans and it needs the consideration on various aspects. Despite the fact that there are some findings of habitable planets recently, I believe that the resources and money that we have invested in it is not worth, considering some factors such as the possibility of a habitable planet, the distance moving to it, the resources to set up a new life, etc. In addition, instead of plunging the budget into space exploration and specifically trying to find out new habitable planets, the government should take other issues into account such as environmental problems, or food security.
It is clear that space exploration has brought to everyone a new world and some certain benefits and opportunities. Firstly, new findings of habitable planets means we cannot only increase the chance of colonization in the other planets but also prove for our abilities to explore an unknown world. There are some remarkable findings of potentially habitable planets in recent years. The most notable one is K2-18b, the first planet that human perceives the existence of water. Moreover, this new planet is twice as big as the Earth and “has a temperature cool enough to have liquid water, between zero and 40 degrees Celsius”(Ghosh). Another recent exoplanet is GJ 357 b, which is only 31 light years from Earth. In addition, there are also exoplanets that people already found like Kepler-296e or Kepler-62e, which raises the hope for establishing the second home for humans. All around the world, many scientists or experts in aerospace and astronomy are really excited about discovering new habitable planets. Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, said that “This is exciting, as this is humanity’s first nearby super-Earth that could harbor life–uncover with help from TESS, our small, mighty mission with a huge reach”(Cornell University). Secondly, nearly two thousand artificial satellites have been launched into space for collecting the data about climate change as well as weather forecasting. In addition, these satellites are also helpful in terms of broadcasting the signals of audio and video all around the world so that people can watch the global events through television from anywhere.
However, there are still disagreements towards space exploration due to some of its drawbacks and unnecessities. There is no doubt that the money that we have pumped into space exploration is enormous. For example, nearly $277 million were spent on the Project Mercury over five-year interval and if adjusted for inflation, that amount can rise up to $2.2 billion (Williams). Indeed, these investments seem to not yield any foreseen or significant results that people feel their money is worth it. In addition, some people think that these space programmes are just aiming at economic benefits for some individuals. Piers Bizony, a science journalist and also a space historian, said that “The money gets circulated here on the ground. There has never been a space programme that hasn’t been a good economic stimulus”(Bizony). Secondly, environmental problems arising from launching the rockets need to be considered. For instance, 40 tonnes of kerosene, which contains 34% carbon dioxide, will be released if we launch three Falcon 9. This amount of carbon is not really significant, but it will become a serious issue if the SpaceX launch them every two weeks for space programs (Whittaker).
Limited opportunities for exploring habitable planets is unavoidable when we continue investing in space exploration. It can be acknowledged that there are some constraints that people have to encounter and hardly overcome when searching for a new habitable planet and settling down a new life there. The first one is about the possibility of finding out an actual habitable planet. NASA said that their ultimate goal in the exoplanet program is to find “unmistakable signs of current life” despite the fact that they already found and announced nearly 50 so-called “habitable” planets. How soon we can reach that goal, as described by NASA, is extremely hopeless, which depends on two factors: the ubiquity of life in the Milky Way and beyond and how ‘lucky’ we can get that in every first attempts (NASA). NASA until now is still acknowledging that some of their findings missions like Kepler, K2, or James Webb Space Telescope could “yield bare bones evidence of the potentially habitable worlds” (NASA).
The second obstacle is about discovering a habitable planet, which has exactly the same physical and environmental conditions like on Earth. A planet is defined as a habitable one when it contains liquid water on the surface and provide suitable environmental conditions (Lissauer), without taking any other elements such as atmosphere or gravity into consideration. Therefore, when a new planet is announced as habitable, it does not mean that we can immediately move there for living because it will need more time and investment to examine the surface or the air. In the solar system, the space from the orbit of Mars and the orbit of Venus is considered as habitable zone (Goldsmith 162). However, there are still problems about the temperature in both these planets. For instance, Venus “wrapped in a stifling blanket of carbon dioxide 100 times thicker than Earth’s nitrogen-oxygen gauze, bakes temperature close to 600 degrees Celsius”, while the temperature on Mars usually stays below 0 degrees Celsius in most regions and seasons” (162). Let’s look outside the solar system and consider habitable planets surrounding a sunlike star. The stars in this zone “typically have only one-hundredth, or even less of the sun’s luminosity”, which obviously prevents the possibility of having a new life there (163). The moon for a long time is believed as an ideal destination for the human to set up a new life. However, some restrictions about the length of the day, atmosphere, temperature and gravity make it hard for people to adapt. For example, because there is little atmosphere on the moon, the wind can be stuck at the hot day side since it cannot move to the cold night side (Ridley); or the gravity on the moon is just about one-sixth of that of the Earth, which makes it hard for people to move from one place to another. As can be seen from the graph below, there are big differences on the temperature and the amount of sunlight relative to Earth of other habitable planets, which show that it is extremely hard to find an exactly similar planet like Earth.
Fig1. Diagram depicts the habitable zone and the temperature and the amount of starlight compared to Earth of some habitable planets
The third factor that needs to be considered is the economic aspects of settling down in a new planet assuming that we already found out the proper one. Travelling from Earth to other planets definitely costs time and resources. Considering Mars, which is on average 225 million kilometers from Earth, and within this distance, it will take six months to travel there. People can bring and land tiny objects on Mars, but the big and heavy ones seem to be impossible. In addition, people may rarely agree to just sit for a very long time to settle down in a new planet with total new conditions. In fact, the habitable planets that we already found are extremely far from our planet, which is nearly 200 times more than the distance from Earth to Mars for the nearest one. Therefore, moving to these places is such a big challenge and needs a huge amount of resources relating to aerospace construction and fuel. Even when we successfully reach these places, some aspects that we still need to invest including base building, settlement, or terraforming. For the base building, research in terms of civil engineering, agricultural, industrial on Mars should be conducted to transform the materials there to useful resources for construction (James 161). After completing this step, we need to “populate the Mars, creating a new branch of human civilization there with exponentially growing capabilities to transform the Red Planet” (162). When the Mars society is established, political and social problems will occur regarding the governmental operation or simply the sovereignty. As we can see, the process of moving and settling down to a new planet is very complex and needs both time and money.
Since nearly impossible opportunities of exploring and settling down a new life in a new habitable planet have been analyzed and discussed above, other exigent problems need to be treated more fairly from now on. The first issue is the global starvation, especially in Africa. It is reported that in African countries like South Sudan, Kenya or Yemen, more than 20 million people are at risk of starvation, which is considered as the largest humanitarian crisis in recent decades (Hanoman 2). To eradicate this problem, we only need to invest around $5bn, which is nearly half of the budget for launching the rocket by NASA (Sijbesma). Another problem that we need to consider is about the environment. Instead of pouring an enormous budget into searching for other habitable planets, the Earth could be better with just a small amount of that money. In fact, it just costs 10 cents to plant a tree. So if we saved only the budget for launching one rocket, we could create a giant forest with the number of trees equal to one third of the Amazon forest. With such an enormous amount of trees like that, we definitely no longer think of colonizing in another habitable planets. Not only just these two problems, but other issues relating to education, healthcare system will also improve significantly if we do not spend money and time on space exploration anymore.
Due to the arguments that I mentioned above, I believe that governments should shift their attention to foreseen urgent problems like poverty or environmental ones instead of continuing investing in space exploration, which actually brings very few practical results, but just limited opportunities that are hard to achieve. Individuals also should change their perceptions about space exploration and stop dreaming of one day we will settle down on a new planet like the moon, or Mars. Instead, their responsibilities should be to collaborate to help poor people, plant trees to protect the environment, and raise awareness of stopping environmental degradation. When achieving all these goals with simple actions and few budget, there is no need to have space programs with a bunch of money pumped in.
Ultimately, there is no doubt that space exploration benefits human life in some cases like weather forecasting. However, I believe that wasting money and resources in this area for a hope of colonizing a new planet is worthless, considering the opportunities that we find out an exact planet with the same physical and environmental conditions like Earth, the distance to move, and the resources to settle down a new life. Hence, everyone should increasingly take other issues like starvation, environment, or education into account to help the world be better.
Works cited
Bizony, Piers. “Debate: For and against space exploration – is space research a waste of time?”
E&T, Jan. 01, 2017,
Cornell University. “TESS satellite uncovers its its ‘first nearby super-Earth’.” ScienceDaily, Jul.
31, 2019, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190731125430.htm
Goldsmith, Donald. Exoplanets: Hidden Worlds and the Quest for Extraterrestrial Life. Havard
University Press, Sep. 10, 2018.
Gosh, Pallab. “Water found for first time on ‘potentially habitable’ planet”. BBC News, Sep. 12,
2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49648746
Hanoman, Jacquelin. Hunger and Poverty in South Africa: The Hidden Faces of Food Insecurity.
Routledge, Sep. 01, 2017.
James, Tom. Deep Space commodities: exploration, production and trading. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018.
Lissauer, Jack. “Habitable zone” ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA,
https://www.britannica.com/science/habitable-zone
Rampelotto, Pabulo., et al. Habitability of the Universe Before Earth: Astrobiology: Exploring
Life on Earth and Beyond. Elsevier Science & Technology, Dec. 01, 2017.
Ridley, Aaron. “Is it better to live on the moon or on Mars? A scientific investigation” QUARTZ,
Oct. 18, 2017,
https://qz.com/1105031/should-humans-colonize-mars-or-the-moon-a-scientific-investigation/
Sijbesma, Feike. “Wiping out hunger in Africa could cost just $5bn. What are we waiting for?”
The Guardian, Jul. 15, 2019,
Whittaker, Ian. “Is SpaceX Being Environmentally Responsible?” Smithsonian.com, Feb. 07,
2018,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/spacex-environmentally-responsible-180968098/
Williams, Matthew. “Is it worth it? The Cost and Benefits of Space Exploration” Interesting
Engineering, Apr. 17, 2019,
https://interestingengineering.com/is-it-worth-it-the-costs-and-benefits-of-space-exploration
“Is there life on other planets?” NASA,
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Reflection
Dear Dr. Ahmed,
The Inquiry 3 provides me a chance to do a lot of research work about the topic that I like. I learned how to find sources related to my own topic by using Miami library website and how to evaluate sources based on CRAAPO. In addition, the IMRaD format is also really helpful, which shows me how to organize a research paper. I believe that this knowledge will be useful to me in the future where I have to take courses related to my major and require me to write a scientific report, for example. The thing that I feel most confident in this assignment is about my ideas of why we should not invest in space exploration, moving from what we have done and will do hypothetically, trying to show difficulties and extremely hard obstacles in every step that we nearly impossibly overcome when setting up a new life. However, I think I need to work more about my paper’s organization. The advice from Dr.Ahmed, which is to check out the IMRaD format, is extremely helpful, but I think my application is not really perfect and still needs to be improved. My favorite passage is when I analyze some factors that we should not invest in space exploration due to the difference between the physical and environmental conditions of Earth and other planets because I can apply all of my research into it and it makes this passage more persuasive.
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