Isaih Rivas position paper.

Space Exploration
Imagine regret of not watching the skies for the the asteroid or comet of doom after it has
leveled an entire city leaving it in fire and destruction. It could also impact the oceans causing 400ft
high tsunami waves. Today mankind has the ability to stop impending doom of earth from space rocks
like the dinosaurs could not by using the technology we have. Today we have probes looking for Near
Earth Objects but some think spending money on programs like these are a waste of resources. Some
people that do not support space exploration can argue against space exploration claiming there are no
direct benefits or we need to solve our problems on earth first. I disagree because space exploration
programs have brought us many benefits in science and society that are worth the cost of money, time
and effort. Money goes away but the knowledge we've gained stays, if they want to argue about money
they can look at global military spending and how it eclipses space budgets of all nations by far. I
believe we need to have more funding and support for space exploration because if we don't it holds us
back from our full potential and a species.
Space exploration programs have been beneficial to the economy in many ways Shortly after
the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, NASA administrator Charles Bolden wrote a blog post about the
mission to mars and mentioned Curiosity created 7,000 jobs through 31 states which means the money
was not wasted in space but it was also put back in the economy. During the Apollo moon landing
missions NASA has estimated 400,000 scientist and engineers were employed to land humans on the
Moon.. In the near future its highly likely we will be collecting asteroids for resources and possibly
mining our Moon because the potential profit from these rocks Chris Taylor writes about this
possibility in his article on mashable.com he writes about an asteroid named Amun 3554 just over a
mile wide composed of platinum and gold. is estimated to be worth 20 Trillion dollars if captured and
used for resources. If we could harvest these asteroids regularly it should change the minds of those
against space exploration cost. exploration. One valid case I can see against the space program
spending is the International Space Station(ISS). The ISS was made for science and collaboration. It

gives humans a permanent low earth orbit space presence It has a total cost of around 250 Billion
dollars. The ISS has not contributed enough for science to have the price tag. One of the positive ways
I see the ISS is the nations working together. Even when the US and Russia were in conflict. the
citizens from the US and Russia on the ISS were still cooperating in peace. .
One view against space exploration is we should take care of our own planet before branching
out of the solar system. Some against space exploration funds claim it would be better to use the money
from space exploration for education, medical or even environmental purposes like pollution of the air,
oceans and global warming I think it would be a mistake to cut the space budget. We can see the
military budget is far greater. Nancy Atkinson writes on space.com the NASA 2009 budget and how it
compares with some other spending. NASA budget was around 19 Billion. She notes in 2009 American
consumers spent spent 88 billion dollars per year on tobacco, 64 billion on illegal drugs and 27 billion
on pizza. Phd student Steven Hoz created an infographic showing 50+ years of NASA budget
combined from 1958-2011 to be around 800 billion while the defense budget in the single year of 2011
push past 900 billion. This shows NASA is underfunded and we should not accept this. It is important
that we take care of our planet but we shouldn't stop space exploration. I would rather see us cut
military funding and put that toward saving the planet. Space programs have brought nations together
in collaboration. If we have more money to spend it might mean bigger projects and more collaboration
between the nations which can bring peace between the nations. Which would help us take care of our
own planet. And we would be able to advance in society and technology.
There have been many spin off technologies from our space exploration efforts. Congress
created the Technology Utilization Program. Its purpose is to educate the public and the media on the
spin off technologies that can benefit various industries. Some of these spinoffs listed on the NASA
spinoff website are artificial limbs, scratch resistance lenses, fire resistant reinforcement, solar cells and
water purification. These technologies are used every day in the world benefiting many. These
technologies have found secondary use through the Technology Utilization Program it's important to

use everything we can so the public does not have fear of wasting space program funds and showing
them secondary benefits of space explorations. It also brings innovation to many industries. If people
understand this they might support the space programs further which will lead to more discoveries.
One of the biggest inspiration for space exploration is the search for life. Today we know life
flourishes where there is water on earth. An extreme example of this is Lake Vostok a sub glacial
antarctic lake 4,000 meters under ice estimated to be in isolation for 15 million years. Becky Oskin
from livescience.com writes about the lake and their findings, Scientist drilled through the ice and took
samples to see if anything was living down there and ended up discovering 3,000+ life forms.This
discovery gives hope to finding life in our own solar system because of a few icy moons thought to
have liquid water oceans the surface ice. If we find life on these worlds it would change the world and
there could be another push in support of space exploration. One of these candidates is the moon of
Jupiter, Europa. But without funding we will not be able to drill under the ice and discover what might
be there. Discovering life in the universe would have a huge impact on society. The future generations
would grow up knowing they are not alone in the universe. It might help people appreciate their own
planet more if they understood their place in the universe.
I believe space exploration has beneficial to the human race and we should not argue to be
against it but we should support it. We can solve our problems on earth without reducing our space
program funding. Space explorations has contributed to science, technology society and culture. One of
the main reasons we explore is curiosity, we want to know what we don't know. There might not be
any benefits directly for fulfilling our curiosity, but the voyage of fulfilling that curiosity has left us
many great things.

Works Cited.

1. Bolden C, 2012 Curiosity Takes Us Back To Mars, retrieved from

https://blogs.nasa.gov/bolden/2012/09/12/post_1344232802884/
2. Nasa Spin Off about Spin Off retrieved https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinhist.html
3. Haroz S 2012, Nov,5. Science and war visualizing us budget priorites
http://steveharoz.com/blog/2012/science-and-war-visualizing-u-s-budget-priorities/
4. Oskin B 2015 Jan 13. Vostok Lake Under Ice retrieved from
http://www.livescience.com/38652-what-is-lake-vostok.html
5. Riley C 2009, Jul 1 The 400,000 strong back up team. Retrieved from
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/jul/02/spollo-11-back-up-team
6. Taylor C 2012 April 26 http://mashable.com/2012/04/26/planetary-resources-asteroid-miningtrillions/