Taking A Stance
There are few things mankind can hold inherently to themselves by nature and possibly the most insurmountable of these evolutionary urges is the drive to explore everything there is to be stumbled upon. When we think of all the frontiers of Earth we as a species have conquered, we always seem to raise the question for ourselves, “What next?”. Most everyone would answer that question: “Space, of course… The final frontier”. When I was young, my family and I would routinely gather around the television (Just as many families did to watch the news or some hit sitcom) except my family would watch the latest space shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral. I was inspired, just as many other kids around the world, watching the crews that had trained their whole lives, both mentally and physically, pile into the small cramped space known as the orbital capsule that sat upon millions of gallons liquid nitrogen. This liquid nitrogen, when lit, could not be diffused, and would accelerate the orbital capsule, containing the bravest humans who ever volunteered for such a majestic feat, thousands of miles above Earth’s atmosphere. You can’t help but be compelled to the point of sheer awe watching these individuals lay their lives on the line in pursuit of knowledge, adventure, and the ever-present stubbornness of their own curiosity. What reservations may opponents of space travel have that would drive them to slash funding from such a noble pursuit?
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Not the least vocal of these opponents are the proponents of conservation. People who take issue with the funds allocated to the space program because they feel that these funds would better be invested in programs dedicated to more sustainable living on the planet we call home. This is not an invalid criticism but it’s neither a strong decry of the space program. NASA has an allotted budget of 0.4% of the national budget with many of it’s own projects dedicated to the conservationist efforts (Satellite imaging, weather and climate graphing) that it is so criticized for. To give context, the military, America’s most well-funded sector, receives 6% of the national budget but even the army invests a large percentage of their funds in conservation research and more sustainable practices. Our biggest expenditure, as a nation, comes from bailing out major financial firms who screwed up the numbers and investing money in monopolistic practices like big oil who have both, historically, done little to support conservation and, on countless number of occasions, have proven very inhibitive of conservation. From a very ethical point of view, conservationists and Earth-minded individuals are not properly prioritizing their competition for funds. Why oppose a sector like space exploration, an area of research that is very supportive of sustainability research and great track record for cleaning up after themselves, when there are so much bigger fish to fry? It’s interesting to me that someone could ever find the room to complain about an area of government funding that does so much for the human race in terms of foreign policy, research, and the inspiration for the next generation of researchers.
