While space may be the final frontier, it currently remains the unfunded frontier. While proposing his new NASA budget, President Obama stated "Space exploration is not a luxury, not an afterthought in America's brighter future, [but] an essential part of that quest… For pennies on the dollar, the space program has improved our lives, advanced our society, strengthened our economy, and inspired generations.” While creating a national budget, many take exception to the $18 billion set aside for NASA; however, NASA receives only half of one percent of our nation's budget. The president and other government leaders may talk of the benefits of space exploration, but in reality the national budget does got give priority to scientific enterprises. After his initial, underwhelming budget proposal for NASA—which included a technological science fair without any direct purpose—the public response pushed the president to instead establish a timetable for a venture to Mars. Many economists and astronomers believe that if we do not set Mars as a goal, NASA itself might not last much long; while distant telescopes monitoring universal background radiation may enthrall cosmologists to no end, the public interest in space exploration needs a hint of drama and adventure. As silly as this argument sounds to scientists, the public investment in space science often plays a critical role in its funding.
As a clearly beneficial and necessary aspect to our continued progress, space exploration programs deserve more public funding as well. With an ambitious space itinerary for the next two decades, Margaret Haerens states that “finding a political middle that can support NASA's program through many presidencies would be Obama's biggest legacy in space.” However, in a country working to recover from a financial crisis, forced to implement economic sanctions, such stable funding remains elusive. The minimal funding for NASA cannot be blamed on an economic downturn: there is no excuse for half of one percent. “The country already spends vast sums on war and defense,” putting all our effort into maintaining global dominance and maintaining national security in our shortsightedness, “when it should be investing in the future of its people” (Levinger).
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In our enlightened view of the budget, we should also cooperate with other nations to fund our space adventures: we should take a unified rather than a competitive approach. Our goals in space should not include the enhancement of American nationalism, fueling American pride, or even “backing up” American DNA, culture, or values; instead, we should strive to improve the scientific knowledge of humankind, back up the DNA, culture, and values of humankind into space, and search for our common humanity among the stars. Space exploration will expand our knowledge, sense of humanity, and possibilities for the future; but so will the method by which we fund those ventures. Using the free market responsibly, re-prioritizing our national budget, and cooperating with other nations will help us to grow and develop, and will bring nearly as many benefits to society as space expansion itself. In this instance, the ends do not justify, but compliment the means.
“There are more and more people coming around to the idea that a positive future for humanity requires human expansion into space” according to Robert Zubrin, and the more people who come around to the idea, the more unified our efforts can become. Human expansion into space will create a better economy, more holistic knowledge base, and increased awareness of our place in the universe. In every aspect, space expansion will create a more positive future. By allocating a larger portion of our national budget to space exploration, and cooperating with other nations instead of competing against them, we may be able to achieve far greater feats in space than we previously imagined. With a new approach to funding the space program scientists can advance their fields beyond our imagination, and humanity can further define our cosmic perspective. Space exploration will reveal more than facts and knowledge: continued expansion into space will benefit artists, explorers, and the curious public.
The cosmos contains countless puzzles for us still to solve; the stars await us to discover their inner workings. Hopefully the aforementioned man on the street would now support the public, private, and global funding of a space program out of curiosity for the universe and responsibility to society. Of our bold quest to Mars and beyond, Robert Zubrin states that “one either grows in life or one decays. Grow or die. I think we should grow.” We must grow our flawed and incomplete view of nature. We must grow in our desire to explore and our drive to discover. We must grow our society beyond the confines of the Earth for both security and innovation. We must grow into space in order to continue to grow as human beings.
