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Exploring Space: Why’s It So Important?By Zaina Adamu, CNNCarol Beckles isn't buying into all the space exploration hype. She’s a single, middle-class mother of three living in a modest, cozy three-bedroom home in Atlanta’s suburbs. She foots the college bill of her oldest daughter Tiffany, who – like her mom – wishes she got more government help to pay for tuition.“It’s definitely hard. From the time that I was a senior (in high school) I had to start figuring out how I was going to pay for this,” said Tiffany who sits close beside her mom.A mere mention of taxpayers’ dollars going to NASA makes Carol cringe. “I don’t see the use. What are we going out there to do?” she asked. CNN commenters often share these sentiments; one recently identified himself/herself as "waste of tax dollars."It’s been asked since space exploration began in the late 1950s. Some people argue that some –- if not all –- funding for space exploration could be used to revitalize the economy, fix the education system, or solve undersea mysteries, among other Earth-related issues.“We need to be researching the bottom of the oceans just as much,” said CNN’s space and science meteorologist Chad Myers. “There could be things at the bottom of the Earth that we don’t know about.”According to a 2010 CNN/ORC poll, 50% of Americans agreed that the money spent for the space shuttle program - which ended last year - should be spent elsewhere. And in a 2009 Gallup poll, the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. space program should be scrapped jumped four points: From 4% to 8% in an 11-year period (1998-2009).The numbers reveal that some question the purpose of space exploration. NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said the government’s financial contribution to NASA has been beneficial to humans and will continue to set breakthroughs in technology.“By sending astronauts to space and trying to understand their biological responses to space environment, we’ve learned a lot about understanding human beings,” said Abdalati. “A lot of the instrumentation in an emergency room, for example, is traceable to investments by NASA to monitor and understand human health and performance in a space-related environment.”Human benefits from space explorationThe birth of the space age has spurred on a plethora of new ideas and ground-breaking technologies that are used in day-to-day living. ?Health: During the early Apollo missions, scientists needed precise images of the moon’s surface in order to land the first man on the moon. In the 1960s, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory created digital image processing, an innovative technology that uses computers to enhance images of the moon. In the medical field, scientists and researchers found that this technology could be used to enhance images of organs in humans. Today, digital image processing is used in Magnetic Resonance Imaging and CT scans.Medicine: Before Dan Carter joined NASA in 1985, developing large amounts of protein crystal was a challenge. He and colleagues discovered that space-produced crystal could be used to make the atomic components of albumin(PDF), an essential human protein. They founded a called New Century Pharmaceuticals in 1997. Their findings helped lead to the development of a cancer drug combination approach and skin care rmation Technology: Captured by satellites, NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System collects and archives information of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and vegetation on a daily basis. The massive amount of data accumulated has reached 4.5 petabytes. That’s equivalent to completely filling 90 million four-drawer file cabinets with paper, according to NASA’s 2010 “Spinoff” publication(PDF). To provide convenient access to the large data repositories, NASA partnered with Archivas Inc. to create a high-tech software program that can hold large amounts of information. Hospitals, cell-phone providers, businesses and organizations now use this same technology to store munications: Satellites play an instrumental role in how we communicate and navigate the world. In the 1960s companies including AT&T and RCA partnered with NASA and other space agencies to build and place satellites in the Earth’s orbit. Global positioning systems, television networks, radio stations and cell-phone carriers are all dependent on satellites to keep the world connected.GPS in particular arose as a result of Sputnik, the Soviet satellite that launched in 1957. Changes in radio frequency helped U.S. scientists track where Sputnik was because of the Doppler effect - that is, a shift in the frequency of sound or light waves corresponds to a change in position. This principle led to a Navy navigation system called TRANSIT intended for submarines. GPS for continuous navigation was developed as a Defense Department initiative in the 1970s, leading to the launch of the first GPS satellite in 1978. The system was complete in 1995 (More about this from ).Environment: When the Saturn 1B launch stand (used in several Apollo missions) was disassembled, it was stored away in an open field. No one knew until years later that the launch stand was coated with a paint containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a toxic chemical that was seeping into the Earth’s soil. Quinn and her colleagues created the Activated Metal Treatment System (AMTS), a paste-like solvent solution that extracts PCBs from paint without removing the paint itself. The innovative system has been redesigned since then to remove many forms of contamination and pesticides on land.Transportation: The parachute shrouds that landed the Vikings on Mars have a fibrous material used in automobile tires. These state-of-the-art tires wereoriginally developed by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Now the tires, famously called radial tires, are manufactured in factories around the world. They are five times more durable than steel and have an expected tread life 10,000 miles greater than conventional tires.Public safety: Those powerful rocket launchers that propel spacecrafts into deep space are now fighting fires. Rory Groonwald, chief engineer at Orbital Technologies Corporation, partnered with the U.S. Air Force Fire Rescue Research Group to design a similar high-pressured system that suppresses fires in seconds. The technology also reduces water usage because the extreme force creates fines water droplets as opposed to an excessive flow.Memory foam: For anyone who gets a better night’s sleep from a foam mattress, NASA’s to thank. The administration originally developed the polyurethane-silicon plastic to reduce harsh impact when spacecrafts landed. Now the famed foam is used in everything from automobiles and airplanes to helmets and horseback saddles.We also have advanced water filtration systems for astronauts as a result of the space program.Talking numbersIn 2012, NASA was allocated $18.7 billion(PDF) from the federal government (less than 1% of the entire U.S. budget) for further research and exploration. $3.8 billion of that will go specifically to space exploration. By comparison, theDepartment of Defense got $670 billion and another $69.8 billion went to education.To put that in perspective, that’s 1.2% of a taxpayer’s total income going to science, space and technology programs while national defense and education receives 26.3% and 4.8% of taxpayers’ dollars, respectively.Even with a limited budget (the smallest budget of any major agency), President Obama emphasized at a 2010 conference at the Kennedy Space Center that space exploration has been key to America’s position as a world leader.“For pennies on the dollar, the space program has improved our lives, advanced our society, strengthened our economy, and inspired generations of Americans,” he said.If re-elected, he plans to pump an additional $6 billion in NASA’s budget over the next three years.The takeawayCarol does not know for sure if Tiffany’s post-secondary education in business administration will lead her to a job in the field. She does know though, that the opportunities for her will be greater if she stays in college, so she said she will continue to invest in her daughter's education.In the same way, said Abdalati, ?society must continue to invest in space exploration.“There’s value to making these investments. It’s very easy to look at the challenges we face financially as a nation and consider alternative investments, but if we don’t carve out a small fraction of the national budget to support exploration, we lose something tremendously important and, in fact, we step back as a society.”CNN's Elizabeth Landau contributed to this report can wait. Oceans can'tby Amitai Etzioni, Special To CNNApril 9, 2012While space travel still gets a lot of attention, not enough attention has been accorded to a major new expedition to the deepest point in the ocean, some 7 miles deep -- the recent journey by James Cameron, on behalf of National Geographic.The cover story of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs lays out the "Case for Space." "60 Minutes" recently ran a story about the dire effects on Florida's space industry of scaling back our extraterrestrial endeavors. Newt Gingrich gained attention earlier this year by calling for building a permanent base on the moon. And President Obama has talked of preparing to eventually send Americans into orbit around Mars .Actually, there are very good reasons to stop spending billions of dollars on manned space missions, to explore space in ways that are safer and much less costly, and to grant much higher priority to other scientific and engineering mega-projects, the oceans in particular. The main costs of space exploration arise from the fact that we are set on sending humans, rather than robots. The reasons such efforts drive up the costs include: A human needs a return ticket, while a robot can go one way. Space vehicles for humans must be made safe, while we can risk a bunch of robots without losing sleep. Robots are much easier to feed, experience little trouble when subject to prolonged weightlessness, and are much easier to shield from radiation. And they can do most tasks humans can.British astronomer royal Martin Rees writes, "I think that the practical case (for manned flights) gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturization. It's hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all." Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg calls manned missions "an incredible waste of money" and argues that "for the cost of putting a few people on a very limited set of locations on Mars we could have dozens of unmanned, robotic missions roving all over Mars."The main argument for using humans is a public relations one. As Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it in Foreign Affairs, "China's latest space proclamations could conceivably produce another 'Sputnik moment' for the United States, spurring the country into action after a relatively fallow period in its space efforts." Also, astronauts are said to inspire our youth to become scientists and explorers. However, it is far from established that we cannot achieve the same effects by making other R&D projects our main priority.Take the oceans, about which we know much less than the dark side of the moon. Ninety percent of the ocean floor has not even been charted, and while we have been to the moon, the technology to explore the ocean's floors is still being developed. For example, a permanent partially-submerged sea exploration station, called the SeaOrbiter, is currently in development.The oceans play a major role in controlling our climate. But we have not learned yet how to use them to cool us off rather than contribute to our overheating. Ocean organisms are said to hold the promise of cures for an array of diseases. An examination of the unique eyes of skate (ray fish) led to advances in combating blindness, the horseshoe crab was crucial in developing a test for bacterial contamination, and sea urchins helped in the development of test-tube fertilization.The toadfish's ability to regenerate its central nervous system is of much interest to neuroscientists. A recent Japanese study concluded that the drug eribulin, which was derived from sea sponges, is effective in combating breast, colon, and urinary cancer.Given the looming crisis of water scarcity, we badly need more efficient and less costly methods to desalinate ocean water. By 2025, 1.8 billion people are expected to suffer from severe water scarcity, with that number jumping to 3.9 billion by 2050—well over a third of the entire global population.If the oceans do not make your heart go pitter-patter, how about engineering a bacteria that eats carbon dioxide -- and thus helps protect the world from overheating -- AND excretes fuel which will allow us to drive our cars and machines, without oil? I cannot find any evidence that people young or old, Americans or citizens of other nations, would be less impressed or less inspired with such a breakthrough than with one more set of photos of a far away galaxy or a whole Milky Way full of stars.Space enthusiasts claim that space exploration has generated major spinoffs for our life right here on Earth. Tyson quotes President Obama suggesting that the Apollo mission "produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gases; energy-saving building materials; and fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers," and adds a few more innovations to the list: "digital imaging, implantable pacemakers, collision-avoidance systems on aircraft, precision LASIK eye surgery, and global positioning satellites."Of course, the space environment is radically different from the one on Earth. Materials and technologies that are suited for a vacuum, zero gravity, and extreme cold and heat are not the ones we typically can use on Earth.Elias Carayannis, professor of Science, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The George Washington University, notes "government agencies -- particularly those such as the National Space and Aeronautics Administration that are continually pressured to justify their activities -- tout the spin-off value of their investments in sometimes quite extravagant claims." Products such as Velcro, Tang, and Teflon that are often cited as spinoffs of space technology did not actually result from the space program.Space promoters tell us, once every few months, that there are signs that there might be or has been water on one of the planets that might make "life" possible. I wonder if some of those who hear these reports interpret them to mean that we expect to find a civilization out there, one that we could ally with, say against the Chinese. What scientists are really talking about is organic material, the kind found in any compost -- not a reason to spend billions of dollars of public funds.In short, do not cry for Mars. It is not going away. We can send R2D2 to explore it and still keep a whole pile of dough for important and inspiring exploration missions right here on Earth, starting at the beach nearest you. ................
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