75 FAQs about Space Travel (The Astronomy Cafe)

So... What's the Real Story?

Even after NASA figures out how to bring down the cost of space travel from $10,000/pound to something more reasonable, the biggest factor limiting our access to space is not a technological problem. It is simply that adults do not see a practical reason for entering space, although many of them may dream of us eventually doing so. We are very quick to come up with money to start wars and make ourselves safe and comfortable, but no nation in existence today would ever consider funding space exploration at the rate we did in the 1960's when we went to the moon. Imagine what we could do, and the places we could go, if we really invested in the high frontier! During the 1960's, NASA's budget was 5% of the American Federal Budget. Today, in 2003, it has fallen to less than 0.7% - nearly a factor of 10 times smaller!!!

Instead of thinking about the future possibilities of space travel, and supporting NASA to do it right, here are the kinds of things we do each year with our national wealth instead:

So, when NASA asks for a paltry $16 billion to explore space, please don't argue that that money can be better spent here on Earth. From the above table, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to show you where that money would actually end up!

Thanks to extravagant science fiction movies and TV series, we may not actually need to invest in space travel at all. Perhaps the illusion that we are a 'space-faring' civilization in our imagination is really all we were looking for in the first place. It is far more fun to imagine and pretend what aliens might look like, than actually investing in a serious way (e.g. SETI) to really find out. Of course, our laid-back attitude about space may be in for a very rude awakening when that next asteroid enters our atmosphere and destroys a city, state or country. Until then, space is a pretty abstract concept for nearly all of the 6 billion people on this planet.

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