Space travel has raised a debate among people on whether to halt or carry on with the idea. The opponents of space travel argue that it is a waste of government financial resources while the proponents highlight the significance of space travel for human development. In this essay, I will elaborate both sides of the argument and provide my opinion on the issue.
The people who argue against space travel, accentuating the waste of government money, hold their view for good reasons. First, there is no great urgency to travel into space. All the while, there are problems in society that are urgent and need tackling immediately, such as pandemic, hunger, poor education etc. Therefore, instead of wasting a great amount of money on space exploration, the government can actually allocate its financial resources to solve those problems. Besides, investment in space travel can be considered speculative and risky. The fact that there have been several instances of space rockets exploding halfway into space, some even right after the launch, proves the so-called investment precarious and financially wasteful.
The advocates for space travel, on the other hand, maintain that exploration of outer space brings forth benefits to humanity. One compelling reason is how space travel has generated knowledge and scientific discoveries that enlighten how people see the Earth and its existence in the solar system. This may sound insignificant for people in general but not for the scientific community. Just as the exploration into atomic and molecular level benefits society with medicine, the exploration into the vast universe has its byproducts. In fact, had there been no effort to pursue space travel, nobody would have known about TV broadcasts, weather forecasts, GPS, and other seemingly mundane things we enjoy and utilize today.
In conclusion, both views have reasonable and compelling arguments on space travel. One weighs on the waste of the government money, while the other considers the human development aspect. My view aligns more with the proponent of this issue for one reason; human beings are born with an inherent spirit of exploration. Regardless whether we are in the scientific fields or not, this is who we are – explorers. If we stop exploring, we stop learning, and if we stop learning, we stop growing. The exploration of outer space has brought advantages to humanity so far, so why stop now? Yes, there will be sacrifice, be it labour or financial or even lives, but this is precisely what explorers have been doing since the time of Galileo until we get to modernity today.