space program?

Question

Why is that we the people don't encourage this program to fix the earth before we go and mess up the rest of whatever is out there?

Answer 1

What can the space program do for earth? We don't send people up but once every six months, and they're concerned with watching mice freak out in zero-g environments, not global climate change.

I agree that there are some better ways to spend our money, but on the flipside, maybe the space program is a good thing? It allows us to keep dreaming about all of those incredible places we can't even begin to imagine, and it's a good way to keep us hoping that there's someone else out there, that we're not alone in the universe.

Answer 2

The space program is an effective tool for dealing with some of Earth's problems (certainly not all of them).

For example, Hurricane Katrina was a huge disaster for New Orleans, killing many people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Now, imagine how bad it could have been without weather satellites to predict it's direction and intensity, not to mention satellite based communications to warn the people in it's path. Similarly, satellites around other planets are now revealing discoveries about weather that influences what we understand about our own planet. If we're going to resolve the question of global warming (and what, if any, solutions exist), much of the research will be best conducted from space.

The space program has been responsible for many other innovations (technology, medicine and even human relations) that have improved life on Earth, just as some of this research has been used for war and other .

A quick visit to http://www.nasa.gov/ will give a partial list of ongoing Earth improvement activities in which the space program plays an essential role (pollution, aircraft de-icing, etc).

Answer 3

I completely agree with Space Age's response.

In addition, I would like to point out that most technological advances these days come as a result of either millitary or scientific spending, and not on funding humanitarian programs.

Do you think you would have this wonderful Internet if there were no millitary? very doubtful. Computers, too, came about largely due to millitary spending. (They wanted a machine to accurately aim the guns on ships - the computations just take humans too long to do by hand) The internet was designed to be a network that could withstand large portions of it being completely destroyed by a nuclear attack.

The space program has also given us COUNTLESS improvements to our daily lives. Worldwide live communications, advanced textiles and materials, electronics, you name it. We have a very high standard of living today thanks to the technological innovations that are driven by the space race and millitary advancements.

Yes, technology would progress without these programs, but nowhere near as fast.

Answer 4

We spend much more money on aircraft and bombs that kill people, destroy plants, and level mountains than we do on the space program. We can't fix the planet by throwing money at it.

I agree that we are, in a way, leaving a bunch of junk floating in space and on the surrounding galactic bodies, but we are doing much more than benign research. We are discovering forces, and proving theories, and understanding how our universe works. How can we save our existance if we don't understand it?