What are we trying to accomplish by exploring space?

Question

Our government is spending millions on space exploration, and one of the goals of exploring space is to find life other than from our own planet.

But I see 2 scenarios here:

1) We spend a ton of money to explore space and we find a planet with a bunch of aliens on it.

2) We spend a bunch of money to explore space and we find planets with no aliens on it.

Either way, how do WE benefit from the outcome? So what if we find a an intelligent life population, what does that do for us? What if we don't? How does it affect us?

Don't you think that there are better things we could be doing with our money??

Answer 1

Every year, people spend as much at Las Vegas nightclubs on cover charges and liquor as it would take to launch and operate three unmanned space missions.  The notion that space exploration is horrendously expensive is a myth.  That perception is largely based on the expression of the space-exploration budget as a small number of highly-visible, big-ticket items, instead of ongoing operational costs or large numbers of small expenditures that characterize agencies with much larger budgets than NASA.

Searching for life is one of many goals of space exploration, but certainly not the only reason.

Exploration first and foremost is simply a human urge:  as phrased by one of the Apollo astronauts, "man must explore."  Our curiosity is a big part of who we are as a species.

In a more practical sense, exploration also answers the important questions "What's out there that could hurt me?" and "What's out there that I can use to make my life better?"  Space exploration is just ordinary exploration into a broader backyard.

Answer 2

Ultimately life on our planet will become unsustainable.  We will at that time (or likely before) die... UNLESS...

Unless we have somewhere else to go that can sustain life.

If we find other planets that we can inhabit, or engineer to be inhabitable, our species will survive - the basic imperative of life is to live.

If we find scenario #1 - Intelligent life - we can either try to 'make  a deal' and share with them or invade their world and make it a colony of the Terran empire.  (though that is of questionable morality - but history is scary on that point!)

If we find scenario #2 - a planet capable of sustaining our existence without intelligent life- Great!  Then we can colonize without invading.

This may seem far fetched to you now - but on the timescale of worlds, this is plausible.

In the immediate term though - we can use space exploration to learn how to save ourselves from real and present dangers such as asteroid and comet collisions with our world.

Read about the Tunguska incident of 1908 and imagine that happening today over Washington D.C. - That's why we need to invest in space exploration.

Answer 3

ppl spend gazilions of $$$ on things like football stadiums an the superbole....  dose any1 complain bout that???  wat gud dose that do???    wats wrong with spending some mony to lern somthing new???

Answer 4

Look at the way our population as a species is exploding. A day will come when we must leave Earth and find another Earth-like planet to inhabit.

Answer 5

If you haven't noticed, we are getting a little overcrowded here. We are using more and more of everything. Fresh clean water, fresh clean air, too much CO2 is being dumped in the air, food production is hurting, the garbage dumps are being overfilled, the population of humans is through the roof (I lost track, 3billion 4billion??), people are getting on each other's nerves, wars, wars and more wars. We need new and fresh real estate. We need more resources. All this to continue on as human beings.

Answer 6

Yeah... too much time and money on manned missions...

But still... every dollar we spend on space exploration is a dollar that doesn't go towards invading some oil-rich country so some politician in the pocket of an oil company can steal from the people to help line his buddies wallets with $$$.

You see a robot on Mars... I see a third world woman or child that didn't get its head blown off.

Answer 7

It is a quest for knowledge, learning about where we came from and how the universe works.  And while feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless may be important things we need to do, why should our quest for knowledge stop for it?  How much money does our military spend?  Why not learn to live in peace with our neighbors and use that money to help the less fortunate?  Why not buy food for the hungry instead of spending millions of dollars bailing out huge corporations?  

Answer 8

Well, first of all: What money? Do you know how much you pay for spaceflight? (I doubt you pay any money at all, you let others pay). Not even 20 USD per year. The average US tax payer pays 8 times more every year for the education budget. And even 36 times more for the military (549 billion USD vs 15 billion USD).

And do you know, where this money is spent? On Earth!

Next, we don't search for life alone. That is just one tiny aspect of space exploration. Actually the smallest. Most projects in spaceflight study physical phenomena,  research how humans can survive in space or have very trivial duties: Make sure you can watch television, get good weather reports and don't get lost with your car. Most money already flows in practical commercial applications of spaceflight technology developed by researching space.

Finally, there is a good letter by Ernst Stuhlinger, answering this question already in 1970. And the arguments did not  change since then.

Answer 9

We can find out more about how the universe began. We might find a way to extract natural resources from the moon or other planets. We might be able to colonize them. We might find ways to protect Earth from natural disasters, such as asteroids or comets colliding.

It's money much better spent than funds for blowing up other countries.