Why should we have a space program?

[Motokid600]

Earth is overcrowded as it is no matter what is done there WILL be poverty,there's simply not enough resorces to sustain a population of 8 billion.But what if we had 2 earths each with 4 billion nobody would go hungry.I know I'm thinking in the long term but it's a choice of putting your eggs in two baskets of breaking half the eggs(ie.mass genocide)We wouldn't even need to go far Alpha centuri has an earth sized planet.Sure it may take 700'000 years at the most but were talking about a sustainable future.and these problems are being solved constant change and innovation over the last 10 years has halved poverty,Clean water is much easier to get and they have much better conditions than the average american during the early 1800s these problems will fix themselves although gradually it's just a matter of perspective.Global warming has occured many times in the past we help a bit but not enough to be the cause the planet has been changing since the end of the last ice age,But even that is being sorted the only country .And war well human nature dictates we need something to fight the last time humanity was without war was well.. never.

The rich get richer and the poor get richer.

We would have Mars populated with biodomes long before then. Which is something we really need to get working on. As you said the Earth is over populated as is. By 2100 over population is going to be the worst issue. Look at China right now. They are already limiting how much kids one can have and our societyis still in its infantcy. Not good. So again the solution to this issue is up there. There's plenty of places we can go without having to leave SoL. I don't believe in complete terraformation. We will never be able to step outside on Mars with shorts, sunglasses and a tshirt. The answer is biodomes. Cap it, pressurize it. Done. In a very vague nutshell anyway.

If you want your children, grand children, great grand children and so on to have a future. We. Must. Go to

. Space. And THEN 12,000 years later we can figure out FTL travel ( which will be possible once we expand our chemistry set to the size of the solar system from a single planet ) we can flee from our dying sun.

[Helix935]

the space program is literally the only program funded by the U.S. government that literally paid itself for during the space race we made memory foam, accelerated the advances made toward the miniaturization of computers, radiation shielding, even medical equipment such as catheters had spawned from the space program

which basically just shows how far NASA fell from those days that progress was made which is sadly only being kept alive for PR as their funding gets cut

[King Arthur]

Personally, I would love to see NASA get axed completely and all of its assets reorganized under a new organization(s) from the ground up. With "programs" like the JWST, Constellation, and now the SLS (which fully I expect to go the way of Constellation) I do not expect NASA as a whole to be worth the money they're currently eating. Sure, NASA has awesome programs/missions in progress like the HST, Mars Rovers, and New Horizons, but on the other hand they also have huge money sink programs in progress mostly for politics than anything else.

[M83]

I'm just going to throw my two cents in here.

I feel like agencies like NASA are beneficial to space overall and shouldn't be usurped by private industry. Private industry currently does things in LEO and supplying cargo to the ISS. They aren't doing any of the things that NASA is tasked with, such as the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and they don't have the ability to do the things that NASA does, since NASA involves science and research to make sure that human spaceflight is a safe venture.

Furthermore, those companies like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are helped a lot by NASA. They get contracts from NASA, and things like the Dreamchaser spaceplane and Boeing's CST-100 are financed by NASA's CCDev program. We wouldn't have a robust rivate space industry were it not for NASA.

Finally, NASA helps hold together the concept of space for the citizens. Despite that we have political bickering over it, NASA represents neither liberals nor conservatives. It represents the people, and it teaches the children of our people to have such ambitious goals such as being an astronaut. Private companies just aren't going to do things like that, and the not only national but international cooperation between NASA, ESA, RSA, etc. help advance not only a countries' knowledge of space, but the world's as a whole. And after all, space is a frontier regardless of nationality.

And King Arthur, just an opinion on your idea of where the SLS is going, I could see the SLS going through. The projected launch of the first SLS is Dec. 17, 2017, and should NASA stay on schedule, there should be no reason for whichever candidate who wins the 2016 presidential election to cancel the SLS if it's only a year from projected launch.

Edited August 4, 2013 by M83

[Brethern]

I'm sure a lot of you believe that even our space program should have more funding. The question is why?

On Earth we have starvation, war and conflict, artificial poverty, HIV/malaria, nuclear proliferation, deforestation, global warming ETC.

Why put money into launching rockets, looking at rocks and stuff when we need to solve these real problems first?

Just throwing in my two cents here,

Roughly $10 billion is spent a year researching AIDS which was known about since the late seventies. If a cure for it was found in minerals on mars would that not make a space program worth it?

[dansmithers]

Why live at all if not to explore? There is one solution to human ills that we've had since day 1-extinction. The space program is a result of the human spirit, as ar eour problems.

Tl,dr: Humans are fallible.

[M.Wolfy]

we have a space program so sooner or later we can have a spare planet to live on

[koshelenkovv]

I'm sure a lot of you believe that even our space program should have more funding. The question is why?

On Earth we have starvation, war and conflict, artificial poverty, HIV/malaria, nuclear proliferation, deforestation, global warming ETC.

Why put money into launching rockets, looking at rocks and stuff when we need to solve these real problems first?

Oh yes, because trillions dollars are wasted on wars and conflict

There are so much money spent on Iraq 'operation' alone that U.S. could redo Apollo and Shuttle programs for this money.

It seems that taxpayers readily give money on wars, but do not want to spend them on space.

After all, it's only naturally for primates to beat each other, but highly unnaturally to land on Moon

[thunderstar]

be careful asking that around here...

just kidding but we need a space program for a lot of things, from communications and maps (satellites) or for exploration, humans and problably every sentient species ever will be curious about whats out there so i think that every species in the universe has a space program, some more advanced and others that just started.

[Budgie]

Honestly, axing space programs won't help. The money will go to the places that we all already complain about. Organizations like the bureaucracy and military will finagle the cash their way. Its a nice thought, but NASA's funding wouldnt be redistributed to the "Feeding the Hungry Agency". Those that vote (who have enough food, or money, for the most part) and those that make laws (who have plenty of both, but thats another story) aren't interested in it

[Astronut25]

1) I remember about a year ago someone calculated that NASA has produced a 20x RoI (Return on Investment) that's insanely good, assuming its accurate.

2) the technological developments/spinoffs NASA should be thanked for more often, is unimaginably long (short list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies) and you might be interested in this site I just found: http://spinoff.nasa.gov/