In the modern day, humans are showing tremendous ambition towards life beyond Earth. While it is supported by some because it is valuable to conduct universe exploration for our species, others contend that such an action is a misallocation of resources. Although space exploration seems costly, I firmly believe that it is necessary for humans to pursue it for technological progress and sustained mankind’s survival.
On the one hand, those who argue that space exploration is a waste of resources have their own understandable justifications. Primarily, space travel requires a huge financial resource for uncertain advantages. In order to launch a spaceship, cutting-edge facilities, ground infrastructures, or state-of-the-art machines, which are extremely exorbitant, are needed to meet the goal but show no firm sign of accomplishment. Instead of pouring a large amount of money into cosmic ventures, opponents for this activity believe that it is more resourceful to allocate money to solve immediate global issues like poverty or climate change.
On the other hand, there are a couple of crucial benefits for space exploration that I totally agree with. Particularly, exploring universe allows humankind to research in the hopes of searching for other habitable planets to ensure humans’ long-term survival. As the global population is growing despite the scarcity of resources, celestial discovery plays an important role in lowering the burdens on Earth. Moreover, making investments in exploring space also drives technological and scientific advancements. Satellites are a prime example that enable humans to enhance weather forecasts and navigation. Ultimately, efforts put into space exploration will catalyze current technology and science that benefit life on Earth.
In my opinion, while detractors of space travel contend that such an activity is prohibitive and wasteful since it necessitates a great deal of financial support, I believe that this vision is short-sighted. Space exploration aims at a long-term, greater mission, characterized by maintaining future generations and driving innovations. Additionally, in case current issues like poverty and environmental degradation are tackled by resources taken from space travel, such issues may not be completely solved because resources on earth are finite while global population increases steadily. Therefore, the return on investment of space travel is promising and more desirable for humankind to concentrate on to sustain their survival.