Have you ever wondered whether space exploration is worth the cost? Billions of pounds are being used up with every mission that could be used on more pressing situations. Situations like pollution or climate change, which are currently tearing our world apart. Fighting poverty and hunger in Africa to give the children more time and money to get a good education and a decent life. The money that is used for space exploration could be used for more important things like preventing poverty , giving clean water and educating children in Africa or helping to fight global warming and pollution even though space exploration has some amazing benefits and has made countless amazing discoveries over the years.
Firstly, the money used for space exploration could be used to prevent global warming and pollution. These are two things that have a cause and effect relationship. The polluting of the Earth, by us is causing global warming which is causing the melting of the ice caps. Although some scientists think that the effects might be the opposite and the Earth will cool, causing a new ice age. Part of the pollution that we are making is caused by the space shuttles which, to begin with release a whole load of co2 during the launch process which is polluting our atmosphere. The launch also affects all of the animals around the launch site, damaging their habitat. Then when the ship is in the air it ejects the boosters and they land into the ocean polluting it and damaging the sea creatures. After finally all of the rest of the junk from the ship is left to float around in the orbit of the Earth. Most of the space junk is made up of dead space satellites but it can also be the odd tool that an astronaut drops or the stages of different types of rockets. This junk can seriously harm spaceships when they are re-entering through the atmosphere, because of the speed the ships are travelling at it can rip off outer tiles or damage windows, possibly harming the astronauts inside.
Secondly, the billions of pounds used on space travel could also be used to help children in Africa get a better Education. According to most sites the first step towards destroying poverty is getting education in Africa. With education the children of today can get jobs tomorrow and a regular income to allow them to have safe drinking water and good food. But without money that’s impossible. If only we could focus some of the money that’s going into space travel into Africa, but not just there though all over the world, then this planet would be a much better place. Every three seconds a child in Africa dies from the lack of clean water, but with that money we can easily prevent these unnecessary deaths.
Finally even though space travel is costing a lot there are still some amazing things being done. Ever since Neil Armstrong took the first step onto the moon on 20 July 1969 humans have craved to know more about the Universe. After the disappointment of not finding any kind of alien on the moon humans have turned their attention to all of the other planets in the solar system, in their search for the answers to the most basic questions, why are we here? And are we alone? So far we have landed probes on every planet in the solar system We have found bacteria on meteors that have landed on Earth that led to the development of one of the theories of how we were created. That we came from some other planet on a meteorite, maybe Mars and evolved here. Some of the successes of space exploration are the hubble telescope, which is capable of peering into space far away. And the ISS (International Space Station) which is amazing in itself because it involved the collaboration of the USA and Russia, who don’t exactly like each other along with a handful of other countries. The cost in some cases is human life though as was shown with the failure of the two space shuttles “Columbia” and “Challenger. Challenger which disintegrated shortly after taking off and Columbia which blew up after re entry. Both killing all seven of the crew.
As you can see all of the world's money should be aimed at bigger problems like poverty and global warming. After the crisis that the world is in is over we can move on to other things like feeding our curiosity. Or maybe we will destroy this world and be forced to move to another that was discovered by our Earth based telescopes. At the end of the day though we are only a small insignificant blue planet, as amazing as it is, among an estimated 10 billion trillion other planets.
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