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Astronaut Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon on July 20, 1969. NEIL ARMSTRONG/AP/Press Association Images

Poll: Is space exploration worth the money?

As one of NASA’s dead satellites comes crashing to Earth, we ask if space exploration is worth the money spent on it. What do you think?

A NASA SATELLITE came crashing (or splashing) to Earth in the early hours of this morning.

The now-defunct satellite was launched over 20 years ago but the human race’s exploits in outer space started long before that.

Space exploration has certainly given the world some memorable moments – the first space walk in 1965 by Russian Alexei Leonov, Neil Armstrong’s successful mission to the moon in 1969, the robot Viking 1 making the first landing on Mars in 1976 and Sally Ride becoming the first American woman in space in 1983 – to name just a few.

In the past, discoveries in space were used as a barometer to judge which countries were the greatest technology “superpowers” and it seems that tradition is being upheld.

Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama revealed plans to build a super-size rocket with a super-size US$35 billion price tag.

At a time of global economic uncertainty, the move has been criticised in some quarters.

What do you think? Is space exploration worth the money?


Poll Results:

Yes (1139)
No (205)
It was in the past but not anymore (139)
I don't know (65)

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44 Comments
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    Mute John Thomas
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    Sep 24th 2011, 3:10 PM

    The dinosaurs failed to invest in space exploration and look what happened to them!

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    Mute Rupert J. Cahill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:31 PM

    I like that analogy ヅ

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    Mute Tony Stanley
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    Sep 24th 2011, 6:40 PM

    Yeah but the Jurassic Space Agency was heavily underfunded and full of dino-corruption…. They couldn’t even get off their asses quick enough to stop that meteorite that wiped them out!

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    Mute Spacer85
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    Sep 24th 2011, 10:58 PM

    stupid dinosaurs…

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    Mute Rupert J. Cahill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 2:51 PM

    The technological advance made for space exploration, We have all benefited from it. Just look around your home.

    97
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    Mute Cork_Granny
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    Sep 24th 2011, 2:59 PM

    a lot of technological advances have indeed been made due to space exploration…. and the same is often said of military research & development……. however i can’t help but think that if ALL the money put into space exploration & military was used solely for R&D, we’d have moved on much more quickly not only in techno terms but in education, health etc….. very idealistic I know ;o)
    The cosmos is and always has been of great interest to us…. I suppose it’s about finding a balance between our curiosity and what is economically viable…….

    33
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    Mute Rupert J. Cahill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:43 PM

    @ Cork_Granny We would be nowhere near the technological advances made if we depended R&D In fact R&D have benefited enormously from the technology derived from space exploration and is only an extension of it.

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    Mute ads20101
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    Sep 24th 2011, 6:39 PM

    A quote from the late, great man Bill Hicks:

    You know all that money we spend on the military ever year – trillions of dollars? Instead, if we use this money to feed and clothe the poor of this world, which it would do many times over, then we can explore space, inner and outer, together, as one race.

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    Mute Brian Ó Dálaigh
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    Sep 24th 2011, 2:57 PM

    Without a shadow of doubt. No space exploration = no satellite television (bye bye Sky), reduced internet capacity, no satellite telephones (bye bye reporting from remote locations such as in Afghanistan). Most of our telecommunications technology is dependent on satellite deployment. Most modern technologies come from two sources – space exploration and war. I don’t know about everyone, but I certainly prefer space exploration over war any day.

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    Mute Craig Walters
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    Sep 24th 2011, 7:07 PM

    U do realise that sat tech came from military expend not NASA also packet switching and appranet … Space ex is the only human endeavour outside of war that’s led to tech advancement …pure acad research is often sequestered for mil purposes

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    Mute Brian Ó Dálaigh
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    Sep 25th 2011, 10:06 AM

    Of course I do. But without space technology there would be no method of delivering them to orbit. No investing in space exploration means all satellites currently in orbit will eventually fall into disrepair or fall into a decaying orbit. Which basically means within about 10-20 years, without investing in space exploration, pretty much all human technology would collapse – and given our extreme dependency on instant information and connectability you could probably say goodbye to any sort of world economy!

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    Mute Seán Ó Briain
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    Sep 24th 2011, 2:59 PM

    At some point, we are going to have to get off of this rock if we want to survive as a species. The only way that will happen is if we put the work in now, and gradually expand to where we can go. It is crucial for our species to master interstellar travel. Fact.

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    Mute Claire Farrell
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    Sep 24th 2011, 9:56 PM

    why are people thumbing down this inevitable fact? whether we fck the Earth up ourselves or wait another 5 billion years for the Sun the wipe us out, we gotta at least try to find a way to survive.

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    Mute Spacer85
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    Sep 24th 2011, 10:57 PM

    yes, lets survive by living in the vacuum of space (?) seriously, people… i’m not gonna be the first person to build a semi-D on the moon. are you? well good luck to you.

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    Mute Seán Ó Briain
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    Sep 25th 2011, 1:35 AM

    Not sure Claire! But I appreciate all thumbs – Be they down or up!

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    Mute Adam Smith
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    Sep 25th 2011, 12:40 PM

    @ Claire. Life on earth has existed for approximately 3.5 billion years, the sun is not going to swallow the earth for approx 5 billion years. Do you really believe there will be anything like human life on this planet at that stage?
    Evolution didn’t stop when we grew thumbs and learned to wear clothes.

    To the rest of you, do you really believe that colonising space is a more viable solution than taking care of the planet we already have?

    I enjoy sci-fi as much as anyone, but that’s just plain delusional.

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    Mute BcuTCM0P
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    Sep 24th 2011, 2:57 PM

    I believe at some point in the future people will start having to move off this rock because of overpopulation, climate pollution, natural resource depletion and other things along them lines. So i think we should invest in it.

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    Mute Spacer85
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    Sep 25th 2011, 8:15 PM

    you are delusional. (i’m sorry my opinion is so hard-line, but that’s what i think).

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    Mute Conor Lalor
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    Sep 24th 2011, 3:04 PM

    That rocket, and the money spend on Nasa in general is a fraction of the money the US spends every year. Nasa more than earns its keep.

    But the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of it is what separates humanity from animals. If we give up on that we give up on humanity.

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    Mute Kevin Maughan
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:16 PM

    This Quote from The West Wing says it all:

    Sam Seaborn: There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry ’cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber ’cause we went to the moon.

    Mallory O’Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?

    Sam Seaborn: Yes.

    Mallory O’Brian: Why?

    Sam Seaborn: ‘Cause it’s next. ‘Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what’s next.

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    Mute David Conroy
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    Sep 24th 2011, 6:02 PM

    Now I’ll be staying up late going through the boxset. Dammit, wish you hadn’t done that.

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    Mute Feckless Whisper
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    Sep 24th 2011, 3:56 PM

    The first woman in space was a Russian in 1963, not an American in 1983.

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    Mute Brian Ó Dálaigh
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    Sep 24th 2011, 4:04 PM

    Aye, Valentina Tereshkova on 16th June 1963 was the first woman and the first civilian in space.

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    Mute Kieran Ballantyne
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    Sep 24th 2011, 3:41 PM

    Spend military budgets on health, water, education, and let space exploration continue, we might need to leave here some day for any number of reasons, but before we spend all on space exploration let’s sort out fairness on this planet first :-)

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    Mute Rupert J. Cahill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:38 PM

    It would be unrealistic to believe the money saved from dropping space Exploration would go towards Fairness.

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    Mute Mark Dennehy
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    Sep 24th 2011, 7:07 PM

    All these people who think spending money on space exploration is bad, really never seem to grasp the obvious – that money gets spent on earth. It means jobs and incomes for people, and that means a boost to the economy. It’s not like the money’s being gathered up and set on fire…

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    Mute Niall Carson
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    Sep 24th 2011, 3:15 PM

    I also believe that we are not told everything that has been discovered by space probes from different nations. It’s only because of infighting between different branches of the us military that we have found out about secret military space craft like TR3B aurora. Google it people

    19
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    Mute Rupert J. Cahill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:33 PM

    We may not have been told any results, but we sure did benefit from the technology!

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    Mute
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    Sep 24th 2011, 4:35 PM

    if there is money left over after looking after health and well being of everyone on the planet we are already responsible for, then alright.

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    Mute Fiachra Maolmordha Ó Raghallaigh
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    Sep 24th 2011, 5:56 PM

    Good healthy competitions between countries and individuals can lead to some great inventions. I, for one, think that the cold war was great in that regard – it forced the US and the USSR to put their greatest minds to work. Unfortunately the Cold War did in fact turn hot, albeit through proxy countries: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war etc etc.

    The new competition in the space race is coming from China. Hopefully that will lead to more great inventions, and so long as China does not employ slaves to build their machines, then we’ll all benefit from it.

    As someone said before, war is the other main driver of innovation. For example, the predecessor to the modern computer (the “Bombe”) was used to decrypt the Enigma code by codebreakers at Bletchley Park. However war is well… brutal and it’s much better that we try and get one up on our enemies by being the first to make it to Mars, than by sending our young men and women out to kill each other.

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    Mute Ian Goode
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    Sep 24th 2011, 8:43 PM

    “The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

    Source — xkcd (Link: http://xkcd.com/893/)

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    Mute Tony Stanley
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    Sep 24th 2011, 6:46 PM

    We conquered the waves, we conquered the skies so why not conquer the universe! It’s natural human instinct to explore and push our limits! We need significant advances in technology to actually break away from our own solar system which could be hundreds of years away at this stage but think of all the good that will come of it!

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    Mute Richard Chapman
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    Sep 24th 2011, 8:16 PM

    Some spending on space exploration is misguided and wasteful. Some on the other hand yields dividends beyond measure. We’d only know a fraction of what we do know about the Earth’s climate without observations from space.

    But in the end I think it’s a non question. If we have the ability to explore and examine space, how could we not do that? We wouldn’t be human if we just ignored it.

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    Mute Sue Anthony
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    Sep 25th 2011, 10:51 AM

    maybe its time we became human enought to know when to stop exploring, researching and to start to took at earth and its inhabitants, and to work at what we have here, making it fit for future generations to inherit. Rather than a throw away commodity.

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    Mute Kevin Maughan
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    Sep 24th 2011, 10:04 PM

    Sorry David! It’s the episode called Galileo from the second season of The Weat Wing.

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    Mute Kevin Maughan
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    Sep 24th 2011, 11:03 PM

    West!

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    Mute David Conroy
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    Sep 25th 2011, 1:07 AM

    Yes, but I’ve started watching the lot again. Look out for the uncharacteristic grammatical error in one of Sam’s speeches in that same episode btw.

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    Mute fizi_water
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    Sep 24th 2011, 4:22 PM

    Pure waste of money in terms of exploring the space, we will never to be able to live anywhere outside the Earth. Worth a while though in terms of side effect research – all the goodies we can use on Earth.

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    Mute William Grogan
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    Sep 25th 2011, 11:27 AM

    It’s total nonsense to say we can’t live in space. We already do.

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    Mute David O'Neill
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    Sep 24th 2011, 7:16 PM

    I think a lot of manned space exploration is fairly pointless and you get very little bang for your buck. I’d prefer more robotic exploration of Mars than ever spending the money to try and get a man there. Likewise seeing what’s below the Ice on Europa interests me far more than anything the International Space Station will throw up.

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    Mute Moira Mcintosh
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    Sep 24th 2011, 7:31 PM

    Technology by-passes so many of our fellowmen.I say money could be better spent on basic human needs on this planet!

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    Mute Karl-Lee Kavanagh
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    Sep 25th 2011, 3:39 AM

    we could send a man to the moon ? just to see what’s up there

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    Mute Eric Davies
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    Sep 25th 2011, 12:16 PM

    it would be well worth it if we could put all the e.m.p’s and t.d’s on a rocket and fire them off into space,there on a different planet anyway!

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    Mute Noel Peare
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    Sep 25th 2011, 10:03 AM

    Wow. All these comments without some conspiracy theorist banging on about how they never went to the moon. Surely there is someone out there ready to restore my cynicism :-)
    On topic – I agree with Sam !

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