Products You May Like
Earth is a pretty great place if you’re a human, what with all the gravity and breathable air. But year by year, humanity’s situation on Earth becomes more precarious. With climate change, economic insecurity, and pandemics stressing the world’s resources, why spend all this money on space exploration?
It’s easy to see why this argument comes up: There are big problems to solve here on Earth, and going to space is expensive. This oversimplification ignores the nature of humanity, the drive that has made us the dominant species on Earth. If we want to stay that way, space exploration is vital. Here are five reasons why we belong up there.
New Technologies and Research
Credit: Christoffer Riemer / CC3.0
Humans did not evolve to go into space, but we go there anyway. That has led to the development of various technologies that feed back into the economy and improve our lives on Earth. Without space programs, we wouldn’t have GPS, accurate weather prediction, solar cells, instantaneous global communication, or the ultraviolet filters in sunglasses and cameras. There’s also medical research happening in space right now that could cure diseases and prolong human lives, and these experiments can’t be done on Earth. Space exploration could save your life someday.
Asteroids Don’t Care About Us
Credit: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona
Speaking of saving lives, space exploration could save all our lives. The solar system has calmed down a lot since the early eons, but there are still an unknown number of big asteroids and comets out there that could smack into the planet and make the COVID-19 pandemic seem like a pleasant memory. It’s not a matter of if another large asteroid hits Earth, but when. A robust space program is the only hope we have of deflecting such an object, and we’re making progress.
In recent years, humanity has visited comets and asteroids, and missions like Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx have returned samples. NASA has also successfully tested asteroid deflection technology with the DART mission. We may soon be able to stop a potentially dangerous asteroid from venturing too close. If we’re not working toward that goal, humanity already has an expiration date.
Colonization Is the Ultimate Backup
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
There are currently over 8 billion humans, which is a lot. However, we’re all crammed together on this one planet. If something happened to Earth, our species could be wiped out. For example, the aforementioned asteroid impact. Colonizing other bodies in the solar system (or building our own orbiting habitats) is a way to create a “backup” of humanity that will survive no matter what happens to Earth.
Maybe future humans will be Martians who will never set foot on Earth. While certain ultra-wealthy space entrepreneurs claim Mars colonization is right around the corner, this could be a more long-term goal. The technology to make that possible and sustain people independently of Earth isn’t going to develop itself.
Space Mining Could Save the World
Credit: NASA / JPL
As the population continues its inexorable upward climb, the strain on our natural resources continues to increase. Current estimates project the world’s population could peak at 10-12 billion around 2100, and those people will consume a lot of resources. The extraction of valuable minerals has led to many problems, including environmental damage and human exploitation, but there’s a wealth of precious materials in space.
You’ve probably heard that the metallic asteroid Psyche, the target for a newly launched probe of the same name, is worth an unfathomable amount of money. That’s true, but there are smaller and more accessible objects that also contain more mineral wealth than we could imagine. Startups like AstroForge want to mine asteroids instead of Earth, which would mean an effectively unlimited supply of raw materials that are rare planetside.
We Are Explorers
Credit: Public domain
There are more practical reasons for space exploration, but one of the principal reasons we must continue is that exploring the unknown is core to the human experience. That’s why humans number in the billions—from our earliest upright steps, we’ve endeavored to learn more about the world around us, allowing us to build a planet-spanning civilization. Exploring space is an opportunity not only to discover new worlds and build advanced technologies but to work together toward a larger goal irrespective of nationality, race, or political ideology. If we can’t stop fighting long enough to do that, we stop being human.