360 Degrees: Should the US Continue to Fund NASA?

Today in social studies class, we discussed how NASA is requesting that the

united states spend more money on new innovations, stating that continuing to fund

them the same amount would produce no real outcomes. They promise reasonable

gains from space if the amount they request is met. Can this funding be justified?

There are many different factors to consider when trying to form an opinion

about this. One is, whether or not the outcomes of exploring space are beneficial

enough to justify spending $10 trillion over the next thirty years on space exploration.

Some of the advocates are claiming that we will need to be able to colonize other

planets when Earth is finally destroyed, and we need to be prepared.

However, why should we spend money to fix problems that do not exist yet instead

of taking care of the ones we have now? Some argue that this money would be

better spent on our military or paying our debts owed to other countries. Although,

I have to wonder that even if this money is not being spent on NASA, what can

guarantee that our government will not waste it on something else instead of

spending it on fixing our problems.

Another factor to consider is the jobs that will be lost if NASA is not continued.

NASA employs around 18,000 Americans, and many more work for them as

government contractors. If the government decides to stop spending on them,

many of those people will be without a job. It can also be argued however, that

the money saved from not funding NASA can be used to create more jobs, but once

again, there is no guarantee of where the money will be spent.

Perhaps if the government decides to stop funding NASA at the moment and

focus our money on more immediate issues, then after our country gets back up on

its feet, it will be able to afford the luxury of space exploration. Maybe at that

point, America would be able to fund NASA fully and get the complete benefits from

what it has to offer for our nation, and possibly the whole world.

There are many different ways to view this NASA dilemma, and all of them

are points that must be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not it

would be beneficial for our country to continue funding NASA at the same rate it

has been for the past 20 years, fully allow all the funding that NASA is asking for,

or to stop funding NASA completely.