‘Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost?’

There’s a really interesting post on the Freakonomics blog. They pose the question “Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost?” Six space gurus were asked to answer.

Keith Cowing’s response caught my eye:

For those who would moan that this money could be “better spent back on Earth,” I would simply say that all of this money is spent on Earth — it creates jobs and provides business to companies, just as any other government program does. You have to spend all of NASA’s money “on Earth.” There is no way to spend it in space — at least, not yet.

Where am I going with this? Asking if space exploration — with humans or robots or both — is worth the effort is like questioning the value of Columbus’s voyages to the New World in the late 1490s. The promise at the time was obvious to some, but not to others. Is manned space exploration worth the cost? If we Americans do not think so, then why is it that nations such as China and India — nations with far greater social welfare issues to address with their limited budgets — are speeding up their space exploration programs? What is it about human space exploration that they see? Could it be what we once saw, and have now forgotten?

As such, my response is another question: for the U.S. in the twenty-first century, is not sending humans into space worth the cost?

He also points out that NASA’s budget is $7 billion per year. That’s pocket change compared to the $10 billion we are spending each month in Iraq.