NASA Is Spending Too Much Money On Space Exploration

1813 Words4 Pages

The report is on space exploration. It aims to find out whether NASA is spending too much money on space exploration, whether space exploration is going to benefit us in the near future or is it just an useless and pointless research to work on.
Space exploration(NASA) focuses on exploring the mystical space. Due to the high technology, there is a high amount of money spent by NASA just to do space exploration where these money can be spend on other more valuable things such as building on the country's economy and military. Therefore, I am finding out does space exploration benefit the society in a different way.
The report focuses on the positive impact and negative impact through space exploration, the purposes of space exploration done …show more content…

It cost more than $20 billion in 1960s dollars or an estimated $205 billion in present-day US dollars. This project brought astronauts for the first time a flight around the Moon in December 1968.Apollo 11 was the space flight that landed first humans on the Moon, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on July 20, 1969, at 20.18 UTC. Armstrong spent about 2 and a half hours outside, Aldrin slightly less, and together they collected 47.5 pounds (21.5kg)of lunar material for return to Earth.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission(MER)
This project had involve 2 space rovers, Sprit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. In the year 2003, NASA sent two rovers-MER-A Spirit and MER-B Opportunity---to explore the Martian surface and geology. This mission objective was to search for characteristics of Mars, the rock and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. The total money spent on this project for building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90-Martian-day primary mission was US$820 million. The fifth mission extension was granted in October 2007, and ran to the end of 2009. The total cost of the first four mission extensions was $104 million, and the fifth mission extension is expected to cost at least $20 …show more content…

What sort of value can you place on better understanding the universe? Think of finding methane on Mars, or discovering an exoplanet, or constructing the International Space Station to do long-term exploration studies. Each has a cost associated with it, but with each also comes a smidgeon of knowledge we can add to the encyclopedia of the human race.
Space can also inspire art, which is something seen heavily in 2014 following the arrival of the European Space Agency Rosetta mission at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It inspired songs, short videos and many other works of art. NASA’s missions, particularly those early space explorers of the 1950s and 1960s, inspired creations from people as famous as Norman Rockwell.
There also are benefits that maybe we cannot anticipate ahead of time. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a network that advocates looking for life around the universe, likely because communicating with beings outside of Earth could bring us some benefit. And perhaps there is another space-related discovery just around the corner that will change our lives drastically.
Negative impacts(Economy

Open Document