A few weeks
ago, I had the opportunity to see the movie Hidden
Figures which tells the story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson
- brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains
behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John
Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence,
turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world.
I’ve always
enjoyed learning about space. My father
had an amateur interest in astronomy and was always waking us up in the middle
of the night to watch a meteor shower, see a comet or otherwise gaze at some
celestial body that was visible enough for us to see and enjoy. He did this so
often, it motivated my sister to became an Earth Space science teacher.
Which is why I
was amazed to find out yesterday that NASA has discovered a single star that is
home to 7 Earth-like planets! I’m not imaginative
enough to believe in aliens out to invade the world, but I do believe there
could be life on other planets – even if “life” just means amoebas or
vegetation.
NASA budget has
been the source of conflict over the years, with some saying we’re spending too
much and others saying it’s not enough.
For fiscal year 2017, NASA’s budget is 18.5 billion. That might seem
like a big number, but it’s actually just .4% of our $4.147 trillion
budget. To put in in perspective, the
Department of Defense’s budget for the same fiscal year is $523.8 billion – or
12.6% of our federal budget. NASA has
launched no new flight crews since 2012, and we currently pay Russia to
transport our crews to the International Space Station.
So, my question
to you this week is, “Do you think we should fund NASA at a higher level and
invest in space exploration, or is the money better spent right here at
home? What are the benefits of space
exploration?” You must answer both
questions for full credit. Answers are
due no later than Wednesday, March 1st, 2017.
P.S. If you haven’t seen Hidden Figures yet, I highly recommend it. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations
to dream big!
I think we should pull money from NASA to use on thing that are going on right now here in the US.
ReplyDeleteSpace helps us find out what is around us but it not like we can get up and go to the other earth like planets so yeah lets pull funding for things going on the earth that we have right now. put that money into fixing up the earth we have.
I'm divided on this.
ReplyDeletePart of me says we should cut some NASA funding for manned space flights, but still give some of the funding towards planetary research, employee revenue, etc and when the time comes for us to explore, give them back the funding.
Another part of me says we are close to finding some form of life that we can actually communicate with (if that's possible) and make arrangements to travel to whichever planet or system to find out more about them. Going off topic...I'm not ruling out the possibility of life on other planets or planets that resemble the same environment as our planet right now. Stranger things have happened.
Ok...back on topic. I do believe that our money would be best spent at home building up our defenses and at least trying to alleviate some of the debt hanging over our heads.
I think more money should be given to NASA for space exploration. If we continue to destroy our planet, we are going to need to find another one to call home. NASA has made many improvements in space exploration since its beginnings and it would be money well spent. We should not be paying Russia to transport our crew into space when we were just against them in the famed Space Race not too long ago.
ReplyDeleteSome benefits of giving more money to NASA for space exploration would again include colonization of new planets. If we could figure out how to travel safely through space, we could avoid the catastrophe of overpopulation, global warming, and other environmental issues. We have already set these in motion and they will be hard to reverse. The only way out is to pack up and move to a different planet. That of course is easier said than done. But if we fund NASA more money, we have a better chance of colonizing planets than if we don't.
If it were funds going towards NASA I would be perfectly fine seeing a tax increase to boost funds. I believe the exploration and colonization of the other planets and moons of our solar system to provide some type of back up for our civilization incase we are unable to save our planet from the out of control climate change.
ReplyDeleteMatt Paulus
I think the money would be better spent here at home. We've got dams that are failing and overflowing, we've got tons of people without homes or jobs, and like someone else said in the comments above, we've got loads of debt hanging over us. Why would we use money to go into space? We have already made our mark up there and for the most part, we've installed all the satellites that we need for now. More money into that would just be a waste, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, I guess some benefits on space exploration would be expansion of human knowledge about space and the solar system, more advanced technology, and overall "bragging" rights for each individual country. Still not worth it though, in my opinion.
I think the money would be better spend here on earth. We have people starving and states that still are suffering from hurricane damage. The United States has a debt of 22.5 trillion dollars, I think we should spend the money here on earth. But I do believe that space exploitation should get some federal funds, just not as much as they are getting.
ReplyDeleteIn the direction we are going, we need to fund more into space exploration considering the fact that we may run out of room on this planet and are also destroying it. They have even discovered several planets with the same atmosphere as Earth's. If we can learn more about it, we can find the technology to travel there and possibly live there too.
ReplyDelete“Do you think we should fund NASA at a higher level and invest in space exploration, or is the money better spent right here at home? What are the benefits of space exploration?” I feel like space exploration is a bit unneccesarry for the time being. There are much more drastic situations to deal with here on Earth like global warming and natural disasters. Although the benefits of space exploration could be huge. We could potentially find other life or a planet that could inhabit human kind. But for the time being, it's just a distant dream.
ReplyDeleteThis is Kaeli Villarreal
ReplyDeleteThis is where I'm biased, I absolutely love space; but I'm a realist. I'm split on this subject. I would love to have NASA funded in finding more ways for humans to get out into outer space - I feel like we're getting closer to sending people to Mars. I want people to be excited about what's out there and what the future could hold in space. However, there's plenty of things in our world that could use some of that funding. While space exploration is something I would want scientists to continue researching, sometimes there are other issues that need focus on. So I can't really give a straight answer to this, if it were a viable option, I would put that money into NASA; mainly because we're running out of space on earth and colonizing another planet, such as Mars, could give humans more room to live. (Not only that, but how cool would it be to walk on Mars?)
Being able to find new scientific discoveries in space is well worth the risk of spending towards space exploration, in my opinion. As long as we don't overspend with a ridiculous amount of money, then I don't see why we shouldn't explore space more. We could easily spend a fraction of our army's funding to go towards space exploration and would still be fine.
ReplyDeleteI think we should leave NASA's funding as is until they absolutely need it for space exploration. Since they've found these new planets I hope they plan to try and explore them. Space holds a lot of benefits of being explored. We could find another place to live since we're practically killing the one we live on now. There could also be new materials on different planets or asteroids not found on earth that could make life changing influences. Its also nice to put everything in perspective once in awhile and see how large the universe actually is.
ReplyDeleteIn all honestly it would be smart to fund NASA for space exploration as there may be many things we can utilize out in space but at the same time we already has enough problems as it is on this planet so why bring our disease to another planet? Like I mentioned earlier there could be materials that we could utilize from outer-space, and other planet we could use for other purposes.
ReplyDelete“Do you think we should fund NASA at a higher level and invest in space exploration, or is the money better spent right here at home? What are the benefits of space exploration?”
ReplyDeleteI definitely think we should be funding NASA involving space exploration, but I also think that we should be focusing on our home planet first. I think that space exploration would help us learn more about our Universe and even meet the species of other planets.
I believe we should focus more of our efforts and money here to work toward building a better future for our planet. As for the second question i believe there are benefits to space exploration such as a more vast knowledge of how the universe works but i believe maintaining and sustaining the health of the environment we have now is more important.
ReplyDeleteShould we fund our money towards NASA? NO!!! The reason why I said that because I think that it will be a waste of money and why would we put toward money to NASA when we have a hard time trying to survive on Earth. So yes put the money towards our home where we all live not in space just to see whats out there. I think if more money was spent here than space then the Earth would be a better place for every one.
ReplyDeleteI do believe we should put more funding into NASA. The exploration of the world around us is always an important discovery to make. With more research poured into programs that support things like the Alcubierre drive we could accomplish traveling at the speed of light.While saving our own planet is always great and of great importance I believe that always having a back up plan, say finding an uninhabited planet that we could live on if need be, is the best solution to insure the human race survival.
ReplyDeleteI believe we should fund NASA at a slightly higher level because the technologies of today could lead to safer and more reliable space exploration. Space exploration leads to scientific progress, as well as a better understanding of the planet we live on, and the universe surrounding it.
ReplyDelete