Credit: NASA
Why should we go into space? What is that justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of Moon rock? Aren't there better causes here on Earth?
In a way, the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase over an almost unimaginable distance. Yet, the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old one.
Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect; it will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.
It won't solve many of our immediate problems on Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them and cause us to look both outwards and inwards. With luck it could unite us to face a common challenge.
This would be a long-term strategy – and by long term, I mean hundreds or even thousands of years. We could have a base on the Moon within 30 years, reach Mars within 50 years even the moons of the outer planets within 200 years.
By 'reach', I mean with manned space flight. We've already driven rover and landed a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn, but if one is considering the future of the human race, we have to go there ourselves.
Going into space won't be cheap, certainly, but it will take only a small proportion of world resources. NASA's budget has remained roughly constant in real terms since the time of the Apollo landings, but it has decreased from 0.3 per cent of U.S. GDP in 1970 to 0.12 per cent today.
Even if we were to increase the amount spent on space endeavours internationally by 20 times, to make a serious effort to send people into space, it would only be a small fraction of world GDP.
There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet, like climate change and pollution, rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a per cent of world GDP for space. Isn't our future worth a quarter of percent?
We thought space was worth a big effort in the '60s. In 1962, President Kennedy committed the U.S. to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. This was achieved just in time by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
The space race helped to create a fascination with science and led to great advances in technology, including the first large-scale integrated circuits which are the basis of all modern computers.
However, after the last Moon landing in 1972, with no future plans for further manned space flight, public interest in space waned. This went along with a fall in enthusiasm for science in the West because, although it had brought great benefits, it had not solved the social problems that increasingly occupied public attention.
A new manned spaceflight program would do a lot to restore public enthusiasm for space and for science generally.
Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I argue should be our long-term strategy.
A goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a man landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite a space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy's Moon target did in the 1960s.
A new interest in space would also increase the public standing of science generally. The low esteem in which science and scientists are held is having serious consequences. We live in a society that is increasingly governed by science and technology, yet fewer and fewer young people long to go into science.
The final frontier
As somebody said, the strongest evidence that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, is that they have not bothered t0 get in touch with us.
ufo
We will use alien technology for space travel,this is our only hope.
the final frontier
Stephen Hawking is no less able than anyone else to put his money where his mouth is, in order to cure his madness, and I'm not even asking of him, the way I do of Michael Kinsley, that he put up everything he owns. The amount of one's wealth which one gives to the government is usually, but need not be necessarily, the minimal amount, according to a standardized form.
Mr. Hawking is earthbound the way many similar and would-be dreamers are: The right person never wants to go first.
Multi-dimensional traveling on the cheap
The "other worlds" which are the basis for your spending billions of dollars, my taxes notwithstanding, can more cheaply be explored here on earth via 'pataphysics. Lapis philosophorum is available to every man and woman here and now, the elements of their beings having originated in stardust. Instead of looking outward to define what is alien, expend your intellect within and explain the lapidary constructs inherent in humanity. Figure it out, sir.
Check your grammar, please.
What exactly does sending "people further into space" mean? Please review the distinction between farther and further.
Home Sweet Home
There are three major flaws to this argument:
The human body and brain is not capable of surviving in space for long periods of time. Our descendants may leave the earth but not in the same bodies we have. Today's astronauts would be brittle boned and 'soggy' in the head. Antarctic 'Big Eye' on a cosmic scale.
A quarter of one percent sounds tiny, unless you're starving, lack adequate water and medical supplies, etc. Why spend funds on a select few when millions could have their lives improved? Remote sensing from space has improved the lives of millions, that's where the emphasis should be - not a group of lonely astronauts looking back to their receding world.
Columbus did make a difference: a hell of one to the new world. Indigenous peoples around the globe were devastated by the greed and pathogens of the Europeans. Given the viability of biological material on Surveyor 3, it is perhaps wise to apply the precautionary principal before we go coughing all over the galaxy.
To conclude on a positive note: today's young people do engage with data sent via the internet. This allows them to be part of the endeavour, instead of passively watching TV. Let's build a science programme focussed on humanity with data accessible to all.
Forfeit the GDP for Space
This idea, that it would be (ethically) possible to spend an extra percentage of the world's GDP on space travel, is far fetched at first glance. However, when considering that life is precious in and for itself (and our goal may be to extend the amount of time that the "highest" form of life survives for, we may have to look at the long term consequences of our (in)action - and act as good utilitarians? Save the people now or the ones to come. Make your choice.
Kurt Vonnegut's insight
"Just because evolution led to intelligence in our case, we shouldn’t assume that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of Darwinian natural selection [. . .] Bacteria and insects will survive quite happily even if our so-called intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_(novel)
Onward
To beyond the shadowy realms: zap you're pregnant, that's witchcraft!
The final frontier
SH - really well explained. Its a shame that we dont just up and go to Mars, look at all the potential benefits!
Instead we spend the whole of the 2000's invading other countries and having financial meltdowns.
Maybe its because we dont seem to have a strong enough reason to go?? In the 60's it was a great goal to have, but at the end of the day we did it because there was a race on. I agree we will get there, just the horizon seems to be continually stretched. Currently the Chinese look like they might give it a crack, and that might start another race...
Actually 20 yrs ago, when i went physics classes we were told we would have fusion reactors by now. If we had those, the 3rd world would have power / we wouldnt be pumping 70 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere a day & we would have a better engine to go to Mars with...