The Discovery Of Space Exploration - 1560 Words

The cosmos has always been fascinating. From the Maya to the Egyptians to the Greeks, reading into what is beyond our terrestrial existence has been an ongoing process. We’ve come a long way from using the stars for calendars and religion. Our advancing technology allows us to probe, and explore. It would be a shame not to go searching, given that it is a very human thing to do. There is no doubt that the prospects of discovering an alien organism or a second Earth are exciting. And we keep getting closer. History is flooded with major astronomical discovery. Of course, this had not been without controversy (as Galileo knew all too well). The modern controversy regarding space exploration is not of religious concern, however, but a†¦show more content†¦According to The Borgen Project, it would take 30 billion dollars a year to put an end to world hunger. (6) The NASA budget is around 18 billion a year. (7) Surely, if space exploration was shut down and the money was reallocated, it major dent could be put into solving the world’s hunger problem. Even Martin Luther King Jr objected: If our nation can spend $35 billion a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam and $20 billion to put a man on the moon it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their two feet right here on earth.† (14) But is such comparison worthy of debate, or is a non sequitur? Putting the numbers in context In reality, is NASA’s budget really all that much? It comprises merely 0.5 per cent of the United States of America’s annual federal budget of around 3.5 trillion dollars. (7) It is almost nothing when compared to the 737 billion dollars per year spent on Defense. (6) Wouldn’t that part of the national budget be better to chip away at? Surely, if the political will was there, the leaders of the world could band together to get rid of all the bad humans have caused and fix all the mistakes that were made in the ongoing history of humankind. The reality is that such a reality will never be realized, since it would involve a complete overhaul of the global socioeconomic system. Inequality is a consequence of capitalism, but it doesn’t seem like too much to spend a trillion or so dollars to patch things up? Yet, the main issues