The entire universe is 45 billion light years, and humans have only explored 0.032 light years of it (“NASA Book”). This brings the percentage of our universe explored to less than one billionth of a percent (“NASA Book”). Some of the general public are satisfied with this amount of exploration and are not willing to give more funds to NASA because they believe it’s budget is large enough. However, there are a plethora of people who disagree. These people strongly believe in expanding NASA’s recently decreased budget, which would allow for further exploration to take place in the hopes of achieving new levels of discovery. NASA spends an exorbitant amount of money each year on space exploration, but the possible benefits outweigh the government
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By 1972, it’s budget was cut to 3.4 billion dollars. (“NASA’s Shuttle”). This loss of 2.5 billion dollars of their budget comes at a great cost when NASA tries to pay for multiple missions and taxpayers are reluctant to give more funds. In fact, “It wasn’t the space shuttle that was preventing us from exploring further,” said space history expert Robert Pearlman, “It was the lack of political will to give NASA more money.” (“NASA’s Shuttle”). The company is forced to make sacrifices when it comes to money. One of the many trips NASA has planned is the legendary journey to Mars. They planned to build a space shuttle and a space station. The space station would be used as a stopping place for shuttles returning from the moon, and eventually, from Mars. Regretfully, the original idea of space missions was abandoned after the decision to end moon missions was finalized in 1972 (Kavanagh). This decision postponed many proposed plans for exploration. More recently, on October 31st, 2014, the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, intended to take tourists to the space station, crashed, killing one of the pilots (Davenport). The crash resulted in a setback for spacecraft technology as manufacturers diagnosed the problem. In spite of recent disasters, space exploration has played a huge role in shaping the history of the
By 1972, it’s budget was cut to 3.4 billion dollars. (“NASA’s Shuttle”). This loss of 2.5 billion dollars of their budget comes at a great cost when NASA tries to pay for multiple missions and taxpayers are reluctant to give more funds. In fact, “It wasn’t the space shuttle that was preventing us from exploring further,” said space history expert Robert Pearlman, “It was the lack of political will to give NASA more money.” (“NASA’s Shuttle”). The company is forced to make sacrifices when it comes to money. One of the many trips NASA has planned is the legendary journey to Mars. They planned to build a space shuttle and a space station. The space station would be used as a stopping place for shuttles returning from the moon, and eventually, from Mars. Regretfully, the original idea of space missions was abandoned after the decision to end moon missions was finalized in 1972 (Kavanagh). This decision postponed many proposed plans for exploration. More recently, on October 31st, 2014, the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, intended to take tourists to the space station, crashed, killing one of the pilots (Davenport). The crash resulted in a setback for spacecraft technology as manufacturers diagnosed the problem. In spite of recent disasters, space exploration has played a huge role in shaping the history of the