Space is limitless, and it inspired me since I was a kid. But every time I'm in the zone & explaining how amazing space is, there must be someone asking "Going to the space is expensive, why don't we just tackle all the problems here on Earth since it's more urgent and do that space thing later?". I've seen this question everywhere too, from YouTube comments section to the internet forum. It's an acceptable extremely logical question, and to answer this we need to have broader view about our society and the risk we're facing. Humans are born to be explorer, do you want to be caveman forever?
Before we continue, let's settle on the same page; as much as I love the idea to colonize mars and make human as inter galactical species, Earth is the best place to live in the universe. nothing could ever replace the Earth. It is our home and we HAVE to protect it.
The Trigger
Back then, space exploration used to be more like a weapon during the cold war era between US and USSR. At first, the Americans were afraid because USSR leaded the space race when they launched the first spacecraft to the space, thinking that they brought some mass destruction weapon that could kill millions of American in a matter of minutes. The US lagged behind quite far from USSR. During the JFK era, he scaled up NASA budget for one mission, to land the first human to the surface of the moon. They succeed, Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was such a big success. They put the US flag in the surface of the moon, all eyes were on TV and and they felt proud of how amazing America back then. The case closed, the US won the space race.
But here's the main silver lining from that moon landing, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin realized that Earth is only a small pale blue dot in the space. When you're in the outer space, when you see Earth from the distance, you wouldn't think the things that divide us as humans. No matter what your race, religion, or nationality, they realized that human is one big entity. Space unites us.
Decades went by and there was not any significance moments of space exploration that motivates us again. Until recently, there are the rise of new science breakthrough & private space exploration companies that make space exploration more feasible than ever. The spirit that connects us as one entity rises up again.
The Money Dilemma
Let's talk about budget since it's the fundamentals of our question. We tend to think that exploring space is expensive, well yes it it. We pour billions of dollar every year, and it seems like it's all just some kind of expensive toys and end up worthless.
But if we see the broader view of how we as society globally use our money, going to the space is not that expensive. Down below I made a simple scale of how actually going to the space is not significantly large amount of money, considering the benefits we get from exploring space.
Surprised? so do I. First let's talk about the nicotine, the poison we inhale everyday, cigarette. The global cigarette consumption is US$705 billion dollars annually, and I didn't even put the global damage cost of smoking. Can you guess how much it costs? it's around freaking US$ 1.3 trillion dollar. Yes, trillions. So, to be fair, the global impact + consumption of cigarette is US$2 trillion dollar! If you're arguing with me how we need to allocate our budget of space exploration through some social causes while smoking a cigarette, sorry your opinions are worthless. It's a moo, thanks Joey.
And don't forget the fact that the US alone, spend US$715 billion dollar for their military budget every year, and it's most likely to be increasing in this Biden era to around 720-ish. I get it that US as the 'leader' of the world, need to have extravagant military & defense force. But... don't you think that 700 billion of dollar is just way too much? considering the fact that World War 3 is most likely not going to happen, the probability is to small thanks to globalization & economic dependency around the world. I mean....700 billion??!!! the US could literally cancel student loans, bring down the healthcare price, or make housing more accessible for Americans only with a small portion of their military & defense budget. How crazy is that.
Now about the social causes, even tough it's kinda hard to exactly calculate the true cost of eliminating things like climate change & world hunger, I found a rough calculation of how much it costs.
Climate change is real, the global temperature keep rising every single year caused by overconsumption and the use of bad sources of energy. It's a time-ticking bomb, the destruction of climate change would be massive and irreversible. Tackling that climate change is not about having much of money and pay it off. We need to think about the allocation of jobs, how to shift the energy sources effectively, do it globally without making any countries left behind. From making Sahara Dessert as the main hotspot of solar panels, to advancing nuclear reactor, scientists and environmentalist have thought about every possible outcomes. The number US$300 billion to US$50 trillion dollar for the next two decades is mostly the cost of infrastructure, it's pretty hard to calculate how much it costs for changing society behavior and even political interfere. But again, I got the rough number just to give you guys a simple glimpse of scale.
The same case applies to world hunger. Eliminating world hunger is not about giving people food 3 times a day for 365 days a year. It's all about the access of clean water, good agricultural resources, how to store food effectively, poverty, etc. It all also connect with how to be a good government without any corruption and also access to education. But it takes around US$ 30 billion dollar a year, and there must be others factor we couldn't exactly calculate too. If hypothetically, Wolverine or Deadpool exist, where they could grow back their flesh no matter how bad the damage was, we could solve the world hunger (just let all the people around the world eat them). JK... or am I?
Now how about space exploration? NASA as the frontier of the world's space exploration, had US$22.5 billion dollar of budget in 2020. Yes, it still took billions of dollar, yes it's still expensive, but they bring real science discoveries in every mission that we can applies for our today's problems and help more discoveries in the future, it's like solving a jigsaw puzzle one puzzle at a time. Space exploration brings new values and businesses opportunities that in the end would impact billions of humans on Earth.
But to cancel the space exploration to save the Earth because of budget allocation, it's a false dilemma. We don't have to choose between space exploration and saving the planet, we can do both. Plus, space exploration brings benefits that will impact how to solve our problems on Earth just like I mentioned before. Space exploration opens the door for opportunities to save the Earth.
The Value of Space
Jeff Bezos speech, 'Going to Space to Benefit Earth' from the 2019 Blue Origin conference strike me the most. What he said basically was we tend to think that the Earth is big. But, as the time goes, we now realize that the Earth is limited, and humanity is bigger than the Earth. Exploring the space is not an option, it's a necessity.
The possibilities are endless, but here I listed down with brief explanation about the top 4 best possibility of space that will save & enhance human civilization:
a. Space Mining & Manufacturing
Hayabusa, a robotic spacecraft launched by JAXA
Space is limitless and Earth is limited. We can't keep making the Earth worse by having heavy industries and over extraction for the next decades. Some of the world's rarest minerals are getting harder to get, and it's vital for us to make the sustainable future we desire. Space is the answer for mining and manufacturing.
Earth because of its gravity, limits production capability of innovation or in some way make it harder. The gravity would damage the materials That's where space manufacturing has advantage by having zero-gravity environment. Things that have been tested or is going to be tested are fiber-optic cable, and organs like heart (yes, you read it right, we could make heart!). The possibilities are endless.
How about space mining? Hayabusa, a robotic spacecraft that launched by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, successfully mined a sample material from asteroid near Earth. Scientists and astronomers have found that we have found the Earth's rarest minerals in some asteroids, we technically could get that and bring it back to Earth. There are a few companies that already developing their technology to asteroid mining, such as Asteroid Mining Corporation, Planetary Resources ,and TransAstra. How tempting this space mining is? astronomer just found an asteroid named 16 Psyche in asteroid belt around Mars and Jupiter that worth more than the world economy, it's US$10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten thousand quadrillion dollar). Well, if that's sound too big, here are the list of some most cost-effective & valuable materials we could mine
Even tough it is still a quite long way to go, at least for now we got a small glimpse and know better what's ahead for us.
P.S: Whoever becomes the true winner of this new space race, they would be the world's first trillionaire, no doubt.
2. Communication Infrastructure
3. Climate Change
Climate change is one of our biggest problem for the next decades, it's irreversible and it doesn't matter where we live, climate change transcends border. Space exploration has a big role to help to solve the problem, from the vantage point of space we could get data, monitor and find new breakthrough about things like the ozone layer, air pollution, changes in sea level and many more.
NASA, as a frontier of the world space exploration, was the first one to reveal the growing hole over the South Pole ozone layer in the 80s. This leaded to major public awareness about our Earth condition and the first global agreement about environmental problem.
Apart from having the ability to know the actual data of the Earth, by going to the space we also could understand other planets climates that are useful to create the possible outcomes on Earth. For example, Venus. Venus as the Earth's twin, currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ and the atmosphere is filled with carbon dioxide (97%). Venus is a living hell, and if don't take care of our Earth seriously we might end up like Venus.
4. Defense Mechanism and Lifeboat from Extinction
I love the movie Armageddon, played by Bruce Willis and hands to God it is one of the movies that got me burst into tears. Even though it's sci-fi, and it is 99% impossible to just pick random dudes to save Earth from the asteroids, the risk is real. We're just one asteroid away away or even internally, one nuclear disaster away, to wipe out our entire civilization.
TLDR
Sources:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/29/metal-asteroid-psyche-nasa-hubble-images/6069223002/
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/4-products-that-make-sense-to-manufacture-in-orbit
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/20/space-research-can-save-the-planet-again-climate-change-environment/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance
http://spaceindustrybulletin.com/the-economic-case-for-asteroid-mining-and-where-we-are-today/
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/527058-how-space-exploration-will-help-to-address-climate-change?rl=1
https://cen.acs.org/physical-chemistry/astrochemistry/tale-2-asteroid-sample-return/96/i39
https://www.livescience.com/how-to-stop-asteroid-from-hitting-earth.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/benefits-of-space/communication.html#:~:text=Space%2Dbased%20technologies%2C%20namely%20communications,from%20one%20or%20many%20locations.
https://stlpartners.com/research/understanding-why-half-the-people-in-the-world-dont-have-access-to-the-internet/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
https://en.unesco.org/news/new-report-global-broadband-access-underscores-urgent-need-reach-half-world-still-unconnected