Essay --

The importance of investing in astronomy and space research It is a widespread opinion that space research and astronomy are trivial issues, often regarded as useless, and that the money invested in them would be better used elsewhere. In the U.S alone —the country with the largest space program, conducted by the famous agency know as NASA—, the percentage of citizens who believe that the space program should be cancelled increased from 4% to 8% between 1998 and 2009 (acoording to a Gallup poll from 2009 carried by the NBC)[1]. Another study conducted by the CNN and the ORC in 2010 showed that 50% of the Americans felt that the money destined to the space shuttle program —which had concluded the year before— would have been better spent somewhere else [2]. The main goal of this essay is to prove those missconceptions wrong through arguments and evidence. The most widespread thesis against space research is that the large amounts of money it costs would be better spent in other fields such as improving social policies like healthcare and education, providing help to the impoverished, and helping restructure the damaged economy in this times of world economical crysis. However, once one looks at the figures with some detail, this idea falls by its own weight. Actually, the investment in space research programs has a dramatic possitive impact on the economy of any country. As Richard Garriott de Cayeux, former astronaut, says in his article in the Huffington Post Investing in Our Future: Does Investing in Space Exploration Help or Hinder Progress Towards Prosperity?, â€Å"Investments that reduce the costs of basic survival needs, or expand access to the tools that allow people to help themselves, is universally a good investment.† [3] Wh... ...a trivial matter which does not desire, that missconception has been proven wrong throughout this essay. It not only has provided us with countless technologies and solutions that make our life easier and better, but also enhaces our knowledge about the universe and aims to give answer to some of the big questions in the history of mankind. Human being has become the dominant species thanks to its superior intelligence and its thirst to push himself towards new limits, explore new boundaries and obtain superior knowledge that makes for his weaknesses compared to other spscies. If we wank to keep moving on, if we want to keep our overpopulated planet sound and its popullation fed, pushing the boundaries stronger than ever is now a must. And refusing to invest in scientific research and education is definetly an step backwards in this path that we, as a society, share.