Recently, a friend of mine raised an issue with a recent announcement that NASA plans to spend millions for an unmanned probe to be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa to investigate the possibility of life existing within the moon’s theoretical liquid oceans. He argued that the money would be better spent helping the people we know live on Earth, seeing a problem with spending such a large sum on space exploration.
While I agree more humanitarian efforts should take place at home and abroad, I respectfully disagree with cutting NASA’s budget. NASA’s budget is projected to be $18 billion in 2015, with roughly $4.5 billion planned to be spent in space exploration. That’s a huge number, but compared to the military budget of a little more than $600 billion, it’s quite the drop in the national spending bucket.
The U.S. spends three times as much for defense as its closest competitor, China, and that’s figuring in a 10 percent increase in the Chinese military’s budget during this fiscal year.
My thoughts are that we could cut the defense budget by a third and spend that $100 billion or so on domestic and international humanitarian aid work. The other $100 billion could go to education and NASA.
Europa is an exciting and worthwhile research subject. While the idea of liquid water existing beneath the surface is a theory, there is a lot of data suggesting it does exist. The Hubble Space Telescope has documented water vapor being vented from the moon and data from the Galileo spacecraft have located a possible site where liquid water, as much as is within the Great Lakes in North America, could exist.
We know life can be found in some amazingly inhospitable conditions on Earth, including super heated underwater volcanic vents and depths so deep that sunlight doesn’t reach the bottom of the ocean.
The likelihood of finding large life forms is remote, but there is a possibility of finding simple organisms such as bacteria. Finding even simple life would answer one of the great scientific questions of our time, if life exists outside of our planet. Life or no life, studying the moon with a probe could yield information that could be a foundation of travel within our solar system.
In fact, it could pave the way for using the ice and possible liquid water on Europa as a means to supply water, oxygen and hydrogen to future manned exploration of the outer planets. It’s an idea that belongs in the realm of science fiction now, but may be possible within a few generations.
Yes, I do see a problem, but not with spending $18 billion on NASA. The problem lies with our outrageously bloated defense budget.
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