Nowadays,the space race requires massive spendings to develop satellites, to train astronauts and to fund more efficient devices. On the one hand, some people argue that space exploration is a critical stake to get more innovation and more economic growth and to strengthen science’s development. On the other hand, others believe that space exploration is too expensive and weakens the funding for areas such as healthcare, education or green transition and their profits would not benefit to working and middle-class. What I think is that gains overcome handicaps due to the fact that space exploration has impacted positively all mankind.
One key advantage of space exploration is its influence on technical progress. Indeed, space race has allowed for seventy years to sharply improve digital devices such as computers or smartphones. Consequently, these types of major innovations have provoked considerable productivity gains for the global economy. As a result, people are wealthier because technical progress allows to increase growth which brings higher profits and salaries. Another benefit is that space exploration is one of the main motors for science development. Indeed, since Sputnik’s launch in 1957, scientific acknowledge about stars, the moon or the sun have considerably soared. Therefore, humans are more able to get information and data about their spacial environment and as other discoveries, it’s a strong achievement for humanity.
Nevertheless, it can be denied that the space race requires a massive funding. Furthermore, currently in many western countries such as France, Germany, or the United-Kingdom, public services funding is not sufficient and there are many strikes organised by public unions. Consequently, some people think that these billions should be spent for other areas such as healthcare, education system or green transition. Not only would space exploration money be wasted, but it would not benefit for common people. Indeed, today, the space race benefits essentially to billionaires’ firms such as SpaceX for Elon Musk and they receive billions of public subsidies. As a result, taxpayers would not receive financial gains.
To conclude, space exploration has brought many economic and scientific benefits for taxpayers despite considerable public spendings which could be used to fund the welfare state. However, in my opinion, advantages outweigh disadvantages due to the fact that space exploration gains trickle down to taxpayers.