Sterne und Planeten haben die Menschheit seit eh und je fasziniert. Doch während die einen Weltraumexpeditionen für reine Geldverschwendung halten, betrachten andere sie als unverzichtbar für das Überleben der Spezies Mensch. Unsere Redaktion gibt beide Meinungen wieder.
NASA’s cumulative funding a few years ago totalled $850 billion (€745 billion), and the annual budget now is around $20 billion — an obscenely large sum of money linked to fairly abstruse research. I disagree with people like Stephen Hawking, who was passionate about the future of the human race and civilization depending on going into outer space. It is a kind of despair. It means that we have given up on this planet, handled things so badly that we have to find another planet to live on. That seems like a nihilistic approach to life, because this planet is quite extraordinary, possibly unique in the universe.
There is a greater infinity of small things here on earth than there is in the vastness of outer space. A cubic centimetre of soil contains a virtual infinity of life. These are real things that are not just interesting in themselves but also have a significant effect on our own lives. Microbes in your large intestine affect your mood, and we know very little about how that happens. There is an infinity of unexplored things here on earth. Yet the amount of money spent on that sort of research is insignificant compared to the $850 billion spent on exploring the universe.
Scientific advances and products can’t justify the costs of space exploration. Velcro, the non-stick frying pan, rocket fuel? Helpful, but hardly the be-all and end-all of life. Sending a body into outer space to test the limits of human endurance is interesting, but it’s hard to believe the future of mankind depends on it. Whereas finding out how to stop this planet falling apart and to live more sustainably certainly is. Understanding the symbiotic relationships that hold the planet together is a whole universe of studies that we’re only scraping the surface of.
There’s a lot of concern about the amount of junk flying around in outer space, but it’s of much less importance than the immense amount of junk we’re polluting this planet with. Would we be any poorer if we didn’t know what was happening on Mars? It would be more exciting to spend that money on cleaning up the oceans and on developing the science of weather management. Instead, we are seeing investment in space travel and tourism. Who wants to go and sit in a capsule out in space? It’s like being on a fairground. It’s a pretty disgraceful example of humanity’s misguided priorities.
There’s a philosophical argument not just for space exploration but for every single thing we do that has no obvious economic return. You cannot measure everything that humans do in terms of economics. What’s the money value, for example, of classifying insects or studying history? It’s how human beings improve themselves. We explore space to understand more about the origins of life on earth, for example through the study of asteroids and comets. Increasing human understanding of how the universe works changes our mindset, our culture; it changes our understanding of our world in our lifetime.
The cost of space exploration appears to be expensive, but compared to other activities, it is not. To hear that a mission costs €400 million sounds prohibitive. But it is nothing compared to what we spend on watching live Champions League football on TV! We spend billions and billions each year on arms deals and weapons to support wars around the world. So let’s look at the return on investment not in terms of money, but in terms of what we learn from it. You see immediately that space exploration represents good value.
There are bigger priorities than the science-fiction aspects of colonizing Mars or going to other galaxies. For example, if you know more about the sun, you can perhaps mitigate the effect of solar storms, which can be very disruptive for a lot of electronics on earth. Many of the essential services for life today, from telecommunications, to navigation systems, to weather forecasts, are affected by the activity of the sun.
Of course we should spend time and money saving our planet. But spending on renewable energies already dwarfs spending on space exploration. Space technology leads to progress in many other fields. Power generation and storage systems in space need to be very light, efficient and long-lasting. Many technological developments for space are very useful on earth, and vice versa. To stop space exploration would mean missing a piece of the overall advancement of science and technology. We have lots of examples from space programmes of increasing our knowledge — and of people deciding to research scientific side subjects. It’s always a good thing to inspire people.