This is a brief position paper I wrote for an English class at Purdue. We were to select a subject we feel compelled to take a stance on, and present and argue our opinion in an effective and logical manner. I have always been concious of the waning public interest in space exploration; despite what is historically and technologically an amazing achievement, many feel that space travel is routine and wonder if it is worth the expense. The real problem is that most people just lack an understanding of the incredible benefits space exploration provides us, and how relatively cheap those benefits come. I implore you to take a few minutes and read the following, in the hope that it might bolster your understanding of NASA’s place in our society and rekindle your belief in the value of exploration.
NASA: Mission Critical
Matthew Rogers
April 29, 2005
Throughout history, humanity has advanced through exploration and discovery. Since the earliest of our species left the cradle of life in Mesopotamia, we have pushed onward and outward, forever seeking new breakthroughs just beyond our present understanding. We have since conquered our planet; the highest mountains, the farthest lands, and all but the deepest of the oceans’ valleys have been explored. Yet all of this isn’t even the tiniest scratch in the vastness of the universe. NASA exists to allow us to take the first steps toward understanding the great beyond, yet some argue that the great expense of exploring space could be put to better use here on Earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. NASA’s budget is relatively meager compared to other government agencies, and history has shown NASA to be an invaluable source of innovation and discovery.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was formed in 1958 by President Eisenhower, who initially opposed the separation of the space program from the Pentagon but agreed to allow it after attaching a provision preventing NASA from carrying out military operations. Formed after Russia had already beaten the United States into space, NASA’s primary mission was to play catch-up by getting a man into space and then, rising to President Kennedy’s challenge put forth in 1961, to put a man on the moon. The agency had a clear purpose in those days: to win the space race for nationalism and for national security. Space was the new high ground, and no free man wanted the communists to have it.
Today, we are not as concerned about a communist country dominating the skies; China is beginning to have ambitions for a presence in space, but that is another subject entirely and is not yet really a part of the public’s concern. Due to the lack of such a clear mission as they had in the 1960s, NASA’s purpose–and therefore, their funding–has come into question in recent years (Foust). Before addressing specific arguments against space exploration, or at least arguments against its prioritization in the national budget, it is important to understand the benefits we gain from launching ourselves into the heavens.
The scope of discovery and invention resulting from NASA missions is almost infinite. From astrophysics to material engineering to medicine, hundreds of disciplines have been enhanced by our forays into the unknown (Eicher). Many household items we take for granted today have their roots in space. For example, smoke detectors were invented by NASA to use on their spacecraft. Quartz timing crystals that you find in most watches, bar codes you see in retail stores, and much of the portable medical equipment in ambulances are all derived from NASA inventions first used in spaceflight. Composite materials designed to be light enough to launch into space but strong enough to withstand the impact of a meteorite and other space junk are now used in helmets, tennis rackets, and even some parts of cars (Baker 46). Over 30,000 products, procedures, and materials have come from the NASA labs (NASA/JSC).
Just as important as the material benefits from space exploration are the intangible yet powerful societal advancements. As stated, exploration has always been a part of human nature. But why? Aside from pure curiosity, which is a powerful motivator in itself, history has shown that exploring can further a nation’s resources, knowledge, and power. Conversely, not only will a nation remain stagnant in its power and development if they fail to explore, but can actually deteriorate in global status and influence. The clearest examples of this causality are China and England in the mid-2nd millennia:
“When Queen Elizabeth, of England, pledged her country’s wealth on settling the new world, her country became a superpower for more than 400 years. China, in 1433, had discovered the Americas, started to colonize them, and then gave up, because they wanted to focus on problems at home. They lost everything.” (NSS)
China to this day still struggles to establish itself as a global power, economically, culturally, and militarily. The importance of exploration to a nation’s robustness and vitality cannot be understated.
The most immediate benefit of exploration is economic growth; discovery of new goods and materials, and the inventions inspired by the needs of exploration, generate enormous returns to the nation’s economy. NASA’s own returns to the United States’ economy are not insignificant–on the order of a 700% return for every dollar invested in space exploration (NSS). This primarily comes in the form of new materials and microelectronics that NASA more or less freely shares with the public or US companies. It has even been suggested that NASA could fund itself if it sold its inventions; however, turning the agency into a for-profit business could politicize it even more, and with a primary motivation of money instead of discovery there could be severe conflicts of interest.
Once understanding the incredible material, economic, and societal benefits to space exploration, the primary argument that remains is from those who seek justification of the funds directed to NASA by the federal government. To keep these arguments from being completely abstract, a typical example is something like, “If our nation can spend… twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth” (Timisoara). Such was the argument of respected civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In most cases, Dr. King and others of similar opinion are not protesting space exploration itself, but its prioritization in the federal budget.
The high-profile, high-romance nature of space travel makes it appear more expensive than it actually is. Many citizens see the expenditures made by NASA and wonder, not unfairly, if that money couldn’t be put to better use to benefit people on Earth. The reality is that the scope of our social problems–in this case, we’ll use poverty–is so far beyond the money spent on NASA that even if we abolished the agency and put every cent into social rehabilitation, the benefits would be almost indistinguishable (Timisoara). This may be startling to many, but once one is able to put the funding in perspective the truth of the situation becomes much more evident.
NASA’s funding and support in the 1960s at the height of the Apollo program was almost unequivocal. Up through the 1969 moon landing, what NASA wanted NASA got. Yet NASA’s budget has almost always been a small percentage of gross national expenditures; since 1975, the space agency’s budget has always been within 0.7% and 1.0% of total expenditures. The year with the highest percentage was 1966, at the height of the development of the Apollo program, when NASA’s budget of $1.6 billion comprised 5.5% of the federal budget (NASA). The typical budget for NASA in recent years is about $15 billion, still less than 1% of total federal expenditures.
Comparing NASA’s budget with agencies whose mission is to alleviate poverty-related problems shows staggering disparities that effectively nullify the argument for diverting funds away from NASA. Most notably: Housing and Urban Development ($40 billion), Health and Human Services ($560 billion), and the Social Security Administration ($50 billion), the agency that figures out how to disburse Social Security payments ($502 billion) (Simmons). Individually, each of these agencies already have many times the funding of NASA, let alone their collective total of $1.15 trillion, 77 times the funding of NASA. That doesn’t even include the countless other more specialized agencies which also have humanitarian purposes. Suffice to say, NASA’s funding is a drop in the bucket of the federal budget. Taken from an economist’s perspective, NASA is one of the government agencies with the highest return on the investment.
Another way to put NASA’s funding into perspective is to consider the spending habits of everyday consumers. Every year, Americans spend $31 billion–twice NASA’s budget–on toys and gifts for their pets; $5 billion during the last holiday season alone went toward new chew toys for Fido. The toy industry in the United States generates $20.3 billion in sales. Consumers’ expenditures on tobacco ($31 billion) and alcohol ($58 billion), and the $250 billion a year spent on the treatment of diseases and complications from those two drugs alone, is over 22 times what NASA gets annually. Finally, Americans spend $586 billion a year on gambling, and, ironically, gambling is what we all do when we don’t provide NASA enough money to watch the sky for asteroids that could impact Earth (Timisoara).
In those examples alone is nearly $1 trillion spent on pets, toys, tobacco, alcohol, and gambling. NASA’s paltry $15 billion, only one fortieth of that, generates scientific, economic, and cultural advancements that doggie toys and Barbies can’t, and doesn’t destroy countless lives like cigarettes and drinking often do. Many of the people who would argue for NASA’s dissolution in order to use the funds elsewhere are the very consumers who would waste so much money on Budweiser and Marlboros. This is not to say that if they stopped such habits all of our problems would be solved, but it does illustrate the sheer magnitude of money that is being thrown around this country, and it makes it easier to understand just how relatively small NASA’s budget is.
Another important point is that social problems like poverty are extremely complex and cannot be solved simply by throwing more money at them. Among other things, to abolish poverty would require a fundamental shift in the U.S. economy and in the mindsets of most Americans. Such radical social change takes more than money; it takes a force of will, a plan, and the determination to see it through. On the night before the launch of Apollo 11, what was to be the first manned landing on the moon, a group of citizens led by Reverend Ralph Abernathy from the Poor People’s Campaign stationed themselves at Cape Canaveral to protest the money being spent sending people into space when others needed help on Earth. They said that spending the money in such a manner was akin to an insult to those who needed food, clothing, and shelter. Thomas Paine, the NASA administrator at the time, met with the Reverend and explained that the advances in space were simplistic compared to the complexity of social problems like poverty, and “…if we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button” (Timisoara).
In addition to the fact that simply stopping space travel wouldn’t solve our social problems, the very argument is nihilistic. Why do we spend money on public monuments and parks? They don’t help the poor. Why does our government commission art, build lushly appointed offices for our elected officials, and spend millions on “berry research” and surveys to make sure the line between Canada and the U.S. hasn’t moved (Simmons)? None of these things cure the sick or get the homeless off the streets. This line of thought could continue uninhibited for hours, but the fact is that although we all may disagree on what is important, the country simply cannot start putting all its funding eggs in a few select baskets. If someone wants to dedicate more money to social services, it can come from a place other than NASA at far less scientific and cultural loss. In other words, NASA’s $15 billion goes a lot farther than many other agencies’ $15 billion.
It is evident that NASA provides invaluable benefits to our economy, society, and culture in the form of inventions, discoveries, and giving us the means to explore and fulfill our dreams. The cost of NASA compared to what it returns to us is negligible. The biggest battle NASA faces, therefore, is educating a misunderstanding public about the true costs and benefits of space exploration. People assume space travel is so fantastically expensive because of its exotic nature, but don’t realize that something as mundane as the government’s Office of Personnel Management costs three to four times what NASA does. Citizens are more susceptible to these kinds of misperceptions in modern times because the romance of NASA has waned–space travel seems more routine, and there hasn’t been a “wow factor” like the moon landing for some time–so people’s support of and fascination with NASA is not as strong as it once was. Nevertheless, space exploration is an integral part of our society and economy, far more so than most people realize. The discoveries still in store for us are beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. It is those discoveries that will continue to propel our culture, our country, and our kind through our own mission of understanding and evolution.
