Nations after nations, every day, every year, celebrates its achievements in space exploration. There is an argument that exploring space is a waste of money and that there are more urgent needs to be addressed on earth, such as reducing poverty and preventing environmental destruction.
First, until all urgent and important matters of the globe have been solved, money bumped on space exploration is meaningless. It is not a common sense at all to invest millions of dollars researching and producing foods for astronauts, while every day, thousands of people are starving. Furthermore, the discovery of outer space only serves a minor group of people if the majorities are even not well-educated.
Turning the coin, some may argue that the purpose of space exploration is to discover new lands, new energy resources or to deter potential threat to the globe. Nevertheless, is it useful to do so while other alternatives are available? Lands on earth are not yet effectively used. New energy resources have not yet been widely used. Threats of plagues have not yet been deterred. Many of the technologies we take for granted today were originated thanks to space research. Take satellite technology, for example, which we depend on for broadcasting and weather forecasting. Without satellites, we would not be able to follow global events as they happen, nor give populations any warning of approaching storms. Gradually, we are learning how humans can survive for long periods in space and even travel to other planets in the future. If space exploration is halted, this valuable knowledge will never be acquired.
In a nutshell, people should only invest in space exploration provided that urgent and essential matters mentioned earlier in this essay have been solved. Also, purposes of space exploration campaigns should be studied carefully, and other alternatives should be considered before the money is wasted.