Lunar Soil, a blog dedicated to space exploration, has taken me to task in a roundabout way over a post I wrote a year and a half ago in which I said “it’s always seemed like a big waste of money to research other planets when we have so many problems going unsolved down here on Earth.” The post links to five articles that supposedly refute my contention. I’ll be the first to admit that this is hardly a new argument, so with an open mind, I followed the links. This article is representative of the two main arguments at play :

When the money used for space exploration is totalled up and presented as a single sum, it looks like a lot of money that one is then tempted to apply to other purposes. That is a deception. In the United States, the federal government each year spends less than 1% of its budget on space exploration, and more than 30% of the budget helping the poor in this country. That means that if the space program were completely eliminated, a poor person instead of getting $1.00 would then get $1.03. That does not seem like the extra help they really need to save them.

What would we lose for giving the extra 3 cents to the poor (or some other program)? Well for one thing without the space program you and I could not be having this e-mail conversation because there would be no communications satellites. There would be no weather satellites so there would be little or no warning of hurricanes or typhoons. I’m not sure about Malaysia, but in the United States it is now unusual for a lot of lives to be lost in a hurricane, whereas in the past we could lose thousands of lives to these storms.

In other words :

It’s not that much money in the grand scheme of things.

If it weren’t for the space program, we wouldn’t have ______.

Both of which I agree with in principle, but let’s dig a little deeper.

I totally agree that NASA’s budget is minuscule in terms of the overall federal budget. That’s why I’d never take any “porkbuster” who thinks he can solve the world’s problems by gutting NASA (or the NEA, foreign aid, etc.) seriously^{[1]Which is why my original post included the caveat “It’s not as big a waste as something like an unprovoked war or a tax giveaway to the super-rich, so it’s not an issue I’ve really lost much sleep worrying about.”}. That said, I strongly object to the implication that every penny that NASA spends is equally noble. How does a mission to Mars or a manned return to the moon help us in the long run? What technological goals do these missions accomplish? How are we breaking new ground by continuously wasting money on the repair and life-support of the space shuttle fleet? What’s the scientific value in sending an octogenarian into space for a photo-op?

It seems that even asking these questions is tantamount to discarding the entire “space program”^{[2]An umbrella term often used to accuse people like me of wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater.}. I don’t think we should stop exploring space entirely, but I would like to have an reasoned debate about NASA’s future without resorting to vague generalities. If I do a post on my concerns over the Mars mission’s cost, it doesn’t mean that I’m some neo-Luddite who thinks we should get rid of our satellites and microwaves to go back to the days of telegraphs and toaster ovens. To pretend that any criticism of NASA is an either/or proposition is as ludicrous as complaining that critics of FDA want to return to the conditions described by Upton Sinclair.

Additionally, I think it’s worthwhile to discuss the elephant in the room, which is that the space program’s popularity and high cost make it an attractive source of federal pork. It’s no bridge in Alaska, but it’s pretty obvious that NASA’s stagnant progress over the last few years has been partially due to the fact that it’s much safer, politically speaking, to keep NASA under the radar by spending cash on the status quo^{[3]Like the well-connected aerospace companies that would lose millions if the shuttle fleet was grounded.} rather than take the risk of publicly asking for more money to modernize our capabilities to travel in space.