Its quite often that some new article highlights some amazing new discovery made possible by an expensive particle accelerator, or a multi-million-dollar rocket launched to send probes into space in order to learn new things about celestial objects. 

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But even more often, the question "Is it all worth it?" is thrown into the mix. Spending billions of dollars annually to look into matters that, thrilling and sating the appetite for curiosity as they are and do, still seemingly end up contributing nothing to ourselves? Why spend all that money, mind and those resources up there when we are no shy of problems down here?

 

Maybe if the question was addressed a different way - specifically, as "What do we have to gain by spending money up there?" the answer would come to us naturally and be accepted with lesser resistance. Nonetheless, the benefits are plentiful.

 

To start with, perhaps it bears worth mentioning that NASA estimates that about every 10,000 years or so, an asteroid of size close to a football field could come hurling towards our planet, causing extreme tidal waves. But cosmic bodies don't even need to be that big to be something to worry about. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimates that a 10-meter body typically has enough kinetic energy to match about five nuclear warheads the size of those dropped on Hiroshima. Granted, asteroids with a radius of 10 meters usually completely burn up in the atmosphere, but even if small fragments survive and impact the ground, they could cause some serious damage. Learning more about not only their locations in space, but also each of their trajectory, probability of impact - and, most importantly, methods to deflect them - could turn out to be just a bit useful in the future.

 

Apart from saving the human race from untimely extinction, space exploration also serves to pave the road for making humans a multi-planetary species. Colonization of other planets has been an accomplishment that scientific minds and the public alike have dreamed of ever since we landed on the moon in 1969. Science fiction novels, such as the 'Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars' trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson have thrived on the idea of calling the Red Planet home.

 

Closer to the current day, we have sent multiple probes up into orbit which do everything from observing and analyzing weather patterns to estimating crop yield, all in an effort to improve the quality of lives here on our own planet. The ESA (European Space Agency), as well as several other organisations, have charged forward in utilizing space for agricultural benefits. Satellites are employing the usage of optical and radar sensors to provide us with information about how much land is being used for cultivation as well as the type of crop and their maturity, health and so forth. Early warnings of crop failure and hence famine can also be issued out, all by virtue of the eyes planted in the skies by advancements in space technology.

 

Moving forth, another great motivation to continue leaving our atmosphere rests in the form of precious minerals that grow rarer and rarer on Earth as we continue to mine them. Asteroids are composed of mainly iron and a mixture of other metals such as, nickel, gold, platinum, palladium, osmium and magnesium, amongst others. While the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits any nation from claiming cosmic objects or territories, it does not explicitly ban the private sector from mining objects in space. Further developments in this area could replenish the reserves which are soon to dry out here.

 

And lastly, it's time to address the elephant in the room. Our curiosity of all that's out there is what spearheads much of our advancements. Every person has, at least once in their lives, looked up at the night sky and wondered, "What's out there?" Somewhere along the road of adulthood, our innate curiosity is suppressed and forgotten, often as a result of other people telling us that it's a waste of time to ponder the mysteries of the universe, as that would get you nowhere but to mathematical equations and scientific theories that end up contributing nothing to society. 

 

Science, however, would beg to differ. Theories which, at first, seem to be nothing but theoretical fodder for intellectual minds, have ended up being key players in our modern life. For instance, Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) would be quite remarkably inaccurate without Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which stated that time is relative and can speed up or slow down depending on factors like the speed of the observer or the gravity they experience. This allows us to identify and account for the change in time perception between our phones here on the ground, and the GPS satellites up in orbit. Without the Theory of Relativity, entire businesses, if not industries, which rely on these satellites, would be rendered impossible. Services such as Uber would be mere abstract concepts that had no ground in reality as we knew it.

 

Quantum mechanics, at first glance, seems to be a theory developed purely for baffling innocent undergraduate minds and giving intellectual people something to talk about at the coffee table. But as it turns out, key elements  of our digital age, such as transistors, LEDs, semiconductors (which in turn, make it possible to develop microprocessors and computer chips) and medical utilities such as the fMRis and the electron microscope, all are a product of our knowledge and advancements in quantum mechanics.

 

So, to draw a conclusion, it's safe to say that there is no "wastage" of either money, resources, time or minds in dedicating them to matters that are beyond the humble wet rock which we call home, since most of what we do out there in space tends to help us out right down here.