User:Bruce Campbell/sandbox4

Recently, NASA has closed down a large portion of their space exploration branch. This comes at a bittersweet moment, due to the fact that the Curiosity rover succeeded in landing on Mars just a few short months ago. The successful landing mission of Curiosity comes as something of an end to an era; it stands as what will likely be the final substantial achievement by NASA for a very long time. Due to budgetary reasons, the agency is going to have to cut back on a large amount of their planned missions, and has also delayed several current plans. The construction of further Moon probes has been moved back probably indefinitely, and several large scale rocket fuel tests have been axed. It's weird to me how a nation can spend billions of dollar getting a rover onto another planet, succeed, and then decide to scale back on further advancements. It's like a director who wins an Oscar and then decides to retire. An achievement of that magnitude should serve to inspire people, not act like a cue to get lazy.

The route of the issue lies in the budget of NASA. If an economy can barely pay for the comfort of people on this planet, it seems illogical to attempt to worry about people on other planets. The most important thing is that the people are being taken care of, and fortunately that is being done. The main motivation for the budget cutbacks seems a sound one, and there are more prioritized issues than space travel. It's almost absurd to suggest space travel when we still have countries where millions are starving and dying.

But the issue doesn't appear to be that simple; while something needs to be toned down to make the budget work, there are far less important things that can be attacked than space exploration. Do we really need to spend billions a year on a war? Billions that can go to the betterment of mankind, rather than the destruction of it. That's not to say that war is inherently a pointless concept, it's just that at this point of time, the motivation for it isn't the most concrete. That's not even factoring in all the other less important money wasters, like for example billions of dollars per year are spent on ways to improve weaponry. We can spend millions on how to kill each other better, but not on the exploration of the universe itself.

It doesn't even directly come back down the fact that the money is being spent elsewhere poorly. You can spend all day accounting to where the money can go, and to where it should go, and to where it could better be directed to. That's not the main issue. The issue is that the US seems to be forgetting what really matters. A lot of the motivation behind the decision stems from selfishness. While the US has cut down the budget for space related advancements, other countries have not followed suit. In fact quite the opposite is true in some countries; both Russia and Japan have actually increased their budgets. Japan, a country that was just inflicted by one of the biggest geographical disasters in history, still somehow managed to scrape together a decent budget. It doesn't quite matter how bad the economy in the US may be, because even in the 60's and during the great depression they managed to direct enough money into their space programs to make reasonable advancements.

Back in the 60's when Russian and the US were warring to see who could get to the moon first, the US somehow managed to win. That was when the idea was prioritized, back when their was something that could be "won" with the idea. Now, there is nothing to win, and nothing that begs to be taken over. The US already succeeded in landing one Mars rover, and the successful landing of another is just adding insult to injury. Russia, despite how badly they were beating the US during almost the entire space race of the 60's, managed to be beaten by the combined strengths of an entire country, all motivated to accomplish something. When they get their thinking caps on, the US can really get something done. The main issue, I believe, is that now that the US has "won" the space war, there seems no further reason to attempt go on. It's like continuing to run during a marathon once you've already finished.

By adding politics to space exploration - the desire to "win" against another country - is what likely resulted in their victory in the first place. How else can you explain that since the moon landing, almost 45 years ago, the best we could do was land a bunch of bots on another planet? The discovery of rocket science came about 30 years before the moon landing was done. Since then, 45 years have passed, and we haven't accomplished anything else as significant. It could be done, of course, but not with a NASA with a slashed budget. It took everything the agency had to win the space war 45 years ago, and it's going to take everything we can fit together if they wish to "win" it again.